Ed Markey: “Thank you, Mr. President. Mr. President, I rise in support of the motion of the Senator from Maine. He is sitting right…”

“Thank you, Mr. President. Mr. President, I rise in support of the motion of the Senator from Maine. He is sitting right at the heart of this issue, and that is that this is nothing more than a con game by the Republicans to give tax breaks to the wealthiest people and the wealthiest corporations in America and then, ultimately, to wind up with a huge addition to the Federal deficit. I thought I would take this time just to explain to the American public what this whole concept of a reconciliation process is. It sounds like a very fancy word, ``reconciliation.'' What does it mean, though, in the legislative context? You have to take it for what it is, and the key part of the words ``reconciliation plan,'' when we are dealing with the Republicans, is the word ``con'' because the whole thing is a con job that they are trying to pull on the American people. Step No. 1 is for them to argue that they are going to give huge tax breaks to the wealthiest corporations and the wealthiest individuals in America. The vast, overwhelming percentage of it goes to them. Pennies on the dollar go to average working families as tax breaks. Then they begin to argue that there is going to be a huge increase in economic growth in the United States, although they made the same argument in 1981 with the Reagan tax breaks, and it turned out it exploded the deficits. Then they made the same argument with the Bush tax breaks, and it exploded the Federal deficit.…”