John Kerry: “today we are debating a $70 billion tax reconciliation bill and the centerpiece of this bill is a provision to extend…”

“today we are debating a $70 billion tax reconciliation bill and the centerpiece of this bill is a provision to extend the lower tax rates on capital gains and dividends that do not expire until the end of 2008. I cannot support this bill for many reasons. It abuses the budget reconciliation process in order to provide an extension of tax cuts to those with incomes above a million dollars rather than addressing tax issues in a fiscally responsible manner. This bill is the third and final piece of a flawed budget strategy that does not put us on a path towards deficit reduction. The first piece was the spending bill that cut $40 billion, with most of those cuts hitting those who need our help the most. The second piece was a $781-billion increase in the debt ceiling, which will bring the total to $3 trillion under this administration's watch. If you combine these three bills, the result is a $30 billion increase in the deficit and record level debt. The conference report does not reflect the tax bill passed by the Senate. Back in November during the Senate Finance markup, I did not support the bill even though it did not include capital gains and dividends tax relief. I was concerned that the bill would come back from the House with this tax relief and that it would substantially increase the deficit in future years. The conference agreement does what I expected and it is even worse than I initially imagined.…”