Chuck Grassley: “I believe we should adopt Senator Kyl's motion to instruct the budget conferees. First of all, I wish to comment on the…”

“I believe we should adopt Senator Kyl's motion to instruct the budget conferees. First of all, I wish to comment on the status of the alternative minimum tax. There is some good news regarding the need to do a patch to protect over 20 million families. The Democratic leadership in this body recognized the importance of halting the effect of this tax on these families and provided room in the budget for a patch for this year. I commend my friend, the chairman of the Budget Committee, for that improvement of the budget resolution over previous years. I do so again and note that the Kyl instruction is consistent with the chairman's position in that regard. The bad news is, we are halfway through the year and the patch has not been done. The reason is that Blue Dog Democrats in the other body will not supply the votes for an un-offset patch in the House of Representatives. By the way, the only Blue Dog answer to deficit reduction is to raise taxes. We have seen it on the AMT, and we have seen it on spending legislation. We are seeing now the GI benefit provisions in the war supplemental bill. Why they think of only raising taxes and not of where to cut spending levels to offset the need to spend someplace else I don't understand. They never seem to propose spending cuts as a remedy. I think it is fair for me to say they never do. They only ask for higher taxes. I hope people in this body will start to pay attention to this issue.”