Bill Nelson: “Madam President--that has a nice ring to it-- it is a privilege for me to take the floor and speak on an unrelated…”

“Madam President--that has a nice ring to it-- it is a privilege for me to take the floor and speak on an unrelated subject but a subject that is of considerable importance to the country and to the decisions we will be making very shortly. That is the adoption of a budget and the decision in that budget of how large the tax cut should be. Just in the last 24 hours, we have seen a consequence of the tax cut that now is proposed by the administration that is soaring upwards of $2.5 trillion over the next 10 years, a tax cut that the fiscal effect of $2.5 trillion would be so large as not only to wipe out all of the available surplus over the next 10 years, but to cause us to suddenly plunge back into deficit spending. We see a consequence of this in the last 24 hours in the fact that the administration is now not proposing to increase the defense budget. Personally, I think we should be looking at a minimum of increasing the defense budget over the next decade to the tune of $100 billion.”