Sam Brownback: “I appreciate the point. I still fundamentally disagree with it. If we are talking about the issue of fairness, we spent…”

“I appreciate the point. I still fundamentally disagree with it. If we are talking about the issue of fairness, we spent 4 weeks talking about raising taxes on tobacco and working Americans. I don't know how many people were arguing at that time, ``OK, if we spent 4 weeks on that then we ought to talk 4 weeks about tax cuts.'' I have only been standing here an hour or two. We spent 4 weeks talking about raising those taxes, vote after vote. Some of the things in that policy area I thought were making some legitimate points about how we should try to cut back on teen smoking--which I do not support; nobody supports teen smoking--and how we can get at it. If we are going to talk about fundamental fairness, we did spend 4 weeks on that particular topic and much of it centered around how we raise taxes. I am talking about on this particular bill, because we are short on the Legislative Calendar, let's talk about a tax cut. We are not getting a vote on that. We are being blocked from getting a vote on a very serious tax policy problem at a very important time in our country. There was a poll of the American public about what they are most concerned about today. Consistently, people have been getting more and more concerned about what is happening to the values of this country, what is happening to us.…”