Paul Coverdell: “earlier this afternoon, the Senator from Massachusetts and the Senator from Connecticut were debating their opposition…”

“earlier this afternoon, the Senator from Massachusetts and the Senator from Connecticut were debating their opposition to the education savings account that we have been struggling with since last July. The essence of their argument is that it does not amount to much, that there would only be $37 of interest saved on a family that had a child in private school and only $7 if the family had a child in public school. You cannot have it both ways. If it is so insignificant, why have we spent the better part of a year filibustering it? Why would the President say, ``I will veto the entire tax relief package if that provision is in there''? Something about that argument does not fit. The other thing I will say about those arguments is that they talk about the tax--that figure is a tax that wouldn't have been paid by that family--but they forget to mention the amount of principal that is in the account earning interest which is forgiven. In the case of $37, that means that family has saved over $1,000 in order to earn the $37 tax relief. What it says to me is how little incentive it takes to make Americans go out and save. Madam President, $1,000 is 50 percent greater than the average savings of American families. The average American family today saves $1,900. That is their savings. And by this modest forgiveness, we take it up to $3,000. So we are using a very modest amount of tax relief to cause Americans to save billions of dollars.”