Political Quotes

“Thank you. I wish to say a few other things about this whole situation, because the Senator from Vermont and I agree on some things and parts of this--obviously this part--but we had a big difference. I wanted to show this from my perspective. I voted for the original tax cuts. I am not sure the Senator from Vermont did. There were very good reasons on both sides. I wish to take a minute, because I have, as I said, critics on both sides, and I want to explain--not explain, but share some thoughts about that and make something very clear. I was one of 12 Democrats--there are only 7 of us left--in the Chamber today who voted for the Bush tax cuts. We were for the middle class and the poor and the wealthy. Everybody got income tax relief, capital gains tax relief, dividend tax relief. Senator Lincoln and I and others worked very hard to make sure that in that package--even though I would have designed it differently if I could have done it myself, but there are no czars around here. This is a democracy. I understand that. I have been doing it for 30 years. We worked hard to shape that package the best we could to direct it and target it to the middle class. There are many critics of that who say you didn't do it well enough. You didn't send it to the middle class. You sent it to the wealthy. I disagree. I think we did as well as we could to send it to the middle class, although the higher brackets were lowered as well.…”