Chuck Grassley: “we will start consideration right now, and there will be up to 20 hours of debate and action on the bill that is before…”

“we will start consideration right now, and there will be up to 20 hours of debate and action on the bill that is before us under the reconciliation provisions of the Budget Act on what will be the largest tax cut that has been given to the American people in the past 20 years. In this process, we are going to take a considerable and substantial sting out of the Federal tax bite. This is the third-largest tax reduction in the last 50 years, to put it in some other perspective as well. Before I get to the issues that are before us, I will say a little bit about the process of putting this legislation together. I know we are all going to be thinking about what kind of tax bill we have, how much taxes are going to be reduced, the fairness of it all, and the equity of it all. But I would like to have my colleagues spend a little bit of time thinking in terms of how we got here. First of all, almost 12 months ago, the President of the United States gave a speech saying that one of the foundations of his campaign was going to be a very substantial tax reduction because taxes have reached the highest point they have ever been in the peacetime history of the United States. He campaigned on that and did not back off one iota when pundits made fun of it, when economists maybe took exception to it. It was very well thought out and intellectually honest.”