Todd Tiahrt: “I just think we ought to remember how we got in the situation we are in today, because we have seen charts and heard…”

“I just think we ought to remember how we got in the situation we are in today, because we have seen charts and heard rhetoric that said the reason Federal revenues are down is because of Republican economic policy, but they have overlooked some of the hard and cold facts; and facts are stubborn things, some hard and cold facts that have happened over the last few years. For example, in 1999 we had a huge tech bust. The NASDAQ dropped more than half. It was not based on Republican policy. Then we had the recession that happened while President Clinton was still in office. It began in November of 2000, before President Bush was sworn in. And then on September 11, 2001, terrorists attacked our homeland and drove our economy down the tubes. The result was a 14 percent reduction in federal revenue. That reduction was not based on Republican policy at all; it was based on those series of events, the most tragic being the attack by terrorists on September 11. Well, what did the Republicans do to respond to that? We lowered taxes across the board for everyone, including the top 1 percent, the same percentage as everybody else, and the result was that today we have more Americans working than ever before in the history of our Nation. And the income of our workers is up higher than it has ever been in the history of our Nation.”