Tom Harkin: “first I thank Senator Murray and the Budget Committee for producing a budget that says loudly and clearly that our No. 1…”

“first I thank Senator Murray and the Budget Committee for producing a budget that says loudly and clearly that our No. 1 priority is to fight for a stronger middle class, even as we dramatically reduce budgets and stabilize the debt by the end of the decade. I also applaud Senator Murray and the committee for producing a budget resolution that insists on a balanced approach to deficit reduction: both spending cuts and revenue increases--both. I also applaud my colleague Senator Levin for his leadership on using his investigating subcommittee, his Permanent Committee on Investigations, to bring to light over the last few years the number of loopholes and the egregious tax spending that we are doing through loopholes that allows corporations and others to get by without paying their fair share of taxes. Senator Carl Levin has long fought to bring fairness to the Tax Code. His investigations have shown that one of the major things we have to do is to close up some of those egregious loopholes. My colleague from Iowa was just talking. He pointed out the years we balanced the budget. I note those are the years when we had a Democratic President, President Clinton. We were working off the 1993 deal that was made to both reduce spending and increase revenues. We had growth in the economy. We had low unemployment. We balanced the budget for 5 years in a row. During that time our revenues averaged about 20 percent of our gross domestic product.…”