Cliff Stearns: “this body last week passed President's Bush's tax relief plan, the first step towards a broad tax reduction for our…”

“this body last week passed President's Bush's tax relief plan, the first step towards a broad tax reduction for our generation. The timing, Mr. Speaker, could not be better for all of us. We have to tighten our belts and prepare for a possible change in our economy. In fact, the NASDAQ stock exchange closed below 2000 points yesterday, the first time the index closed so low since December, 1998. President Bush's tax relief plan is a vital means of ensuring the economic engine that we have today continues to move forward, continues running; and of course, we do not want the economy to stall. By returning Americans' hard-earned dollars back to their wallets through tax relief, we will be saving Americans their checking accounts and, of course, and this is my point this afternoon, from Congress spending their money. For, if we fail to return money back to all those hard- working Americans, men and women, the Federal Government will just keep writing checks to spend their money. It is important we give it back to them, with the economy starting to slow. How much money would Congress spend? Well, due to previous threats of a government shutdown by former President Clinton, and now a practically evenly divided Congress, the Federal Government has been on a spending spree of record proportions since the budgets emerged in 1998. I believe President Bush has proposed holding spending at roughly 4 percent, a 4 percent increase.…”