Chuck Grassley: “I get a little tired of people on the other side of the aisle making the point that tax cuts are responsible for the…”

“I get a little tired of people on the other side of the aisle making the point that tax cuts are responsible for the deficit we have, when you consider we inherited a recession from the previous administration, and we had September 11, and because of the catastrophe of September 11, income to our Federal Treasury went down from $2.1 trillion to $1.75 trillion. That went on over a period of 3 years before the economy turned around. Then, to find fault with the tax cuts of 2001 and 2003, a person no less than Chairman Greenspan said those tax cuts were what turned this economy around. And turning the economy around, we have $274 billion more coming into the Federal Treasury in the year 2005 than we did in 2004. And then, especially when you measure deficits by gross national product, our deficit now is less than it was in 1993 under Clinton. Our deficit now is less than it was under Reagan in 1982, and a lot less in the case of 1982. Now, what I rise for is this: the justification that was made this morning that we are having this reconciliation bill, cutting expenditures, so we can cut taxes. We are not going to cut taxes any more. We have done that in 2001 and 2003. That tax policy is what turned this economy around and brought in $274 billion more this year than last year, even $70 billion more in the last 10 months than we estimated back in February would come in this year.…”