On the recordDecember 13, 2012
I appreciate my colleagues for their take on where we are, and I wanted to offer kind of an alternative view on that. And it's not an alternative view in that it is one that's not commonly shared. It's a bipartisan view. But we hadn't heard it much in this particular debate. I want to take you back, Mr. Speaker, to John F. Kennedy. He's a revered President for a whole variety of reasons. I come from a rock- solid, hard-core conservative district in the State of Georgia, but I absolutely see the wisdom of so much of what President Kennedy was trying to do for the country. He said this: It's a paradoxical truth that tax rates are too high and tax revenues are too low, and the soundest way to raise the revenues in the long run is to cut the rates now. The purpose of cutting taxes now is not to incur a budget deficit but to achieve the more prosperous, expanding economy which can bring a budget surplus. John F. Kennedy, November 20, 1962. Those words are as true today as they were then, Mr. Speaker. But we have a different kind of budget challenge today than we had then. The largest budget deficits in your and my lifetime, Mr. Speaker, were run up during the George W. Bush administration. Again, I come from a hard- core red State, Republican through and through in our part of the world, and I can tell you the largest budget deficits in the history of this country were run up during a Republican Presidential administration.…
