Kendrick Meek: “Let me just tell you what they are doing. Presently, they would say it is reducing the deficit, but what they are not…”

“Let me just tell you what they are doing. Presently, they would say it is reducing the deficit, but what they are not saying within another 2 weeks, we are going to give people that make over half a million dollars a year the biggest tax cut they have ever seen. One Member described it on that side as we are going to help the productive people here in the United States; we are going to help the productive people. So I guess that means, American worker, if you make between $34,000 and $54,000 and you get an $840 tax cut, you are not necessarily in that group of the half a million folks. I want you to go further on that chart, but just before we get too far away from what the Rules Committee did tonight on a party-line vote, you hear Members come to the floor and other Members say, oh, well, we are for fairness; we do not know why the Democrats will not offer their alternatives; they have nothing but complaints; it is almost un-American. I am going to tell you what is un-American, Mr. Speaker, and I am going to tell you what is limiting the voice of the Democratic side over here. The rule that was passed from the Rules Committee just moments ago in darkness, there was not a television camera in that room. When we start talking about the back halls of Congress, it is our job here in the 30 Something Working Group, good or bad, we are supposed to expose what happens in the back halls of Congress. Let me just read this. This is not something that I printed.…”