Political Quotes

“now that the budget resolution has been adopted, I wanted to take a few moments to discuss several of the more important votes that took place. The first of these was the Hatch-Kennedy amendment. This amendment was characterized as an effort to raise cigarette excise taxes in order to provide health care for low- and moderate-income children. I take exception to that description. There was nothing in the Hatch-Kennedy amendment to ensure that the new taxes would be imposed upon cigarettes or that the additional revenues would be spent on children's health. The net effect of this amendment would have been to raise taxes by $30 billion and spending by $20 billion, period. I have several reasons for opposing an amendment of this sort. First, I am not opposed to taxing cigarettes in order to either reduce taxes elsewhere or fund important programs, and this vote should not be interpreted as such. The net effect of this amendment, however, would be to reduce the net tax cut contained within this resolution-- tax cuts targeted at families, education, and pro-growth policies--by $30 billion. The tax cut contained in this resolution is already less than 1 percent of the total Federal tax burden over the next 5 years, barely adequate to provided badly needed tax relief to families and small businesses. I believe that level is already too low, and I certainly do not support making it smaller.”