Paul Coverdell: “at the end of July, beginning of August, the Congress, in an almost unprecedented fashion and with speed, passed a very…”

“at the end of July, beginning of August, the Congress, in an almost unprecedented fashion and with speed, passed a very significant tax relief bill in Washington. It has been the subject of much discussion and debate. We could not find very accurate descriptions of this tax proposal, and so Senators and House Members who believed in tax relief went home, and for the last month they have held 500, 700 town halls. They have been throughout the country describing what the tax proposal actually is. I remember being in a small city in the northern part of my State, Rome, GA, and saying, so far, I had read very little that adequately described what the totality of the tax proposal was. I have just come from a press conference in the Senate gallery with House and Senate Members. I was taken by the fact that of the six or seven Members there, they all spoke of this mischaracterization they were struggling with when they initially got home. It was characterized as a very large tax bill that would disrupt Social Security and Medicare. There was very little understanding of the proposal, which is this: It is proposed that over the next 10 years, there will be some $3 trillion in surpluses. Now, these surpluses are a product of the fact that over the last 4 years, a majority of the U.S. Congress has argued for balanced budgets and for financial constraint.”