Karen Thurman: “If I remember correctly, the number that was given as kind of the estimate without being scored was about $50 billion.…”

“If I remember correctly, the number that was given as kind of the estimate without being scored was about $50 billion. So if I take 50 from 184 that leaves me 134, so I still now have $44 billion. I could pay for this pension part, and I still have $44 billion to kind of work with here. Because if I really just want to take care of the marriage tax penalty, I only really need $90 billion. So what is the next issue? Well, we could only squeeze out of this surplus $50 billion, or I am sorry, $40 billion for prescription drugs. Right? That is it. We are going to send it to those HMOs that are pulling out of all of our districts. We are going to give subsidies to insurance companies who do not even want to give a drug bill. Correct? So if we took that $44 billion and transferred it over to the $40 billion that we already have, we could potentially get to a negotiation. That is just the marriage tax. That is compromise. That is looking at numbers. That is understanding that we can do both. We do not have to just do one. All we have said to them, and have reached over there and said is, give us a chance to talk about this. But no, we come to this floor just before convention time, just before everybody wants to go home and talk about these tax cuts. The fact of the matter is, we could do it for a lot of people.…”