John W. Olver: “in the next few days we are going to learn something about tax fairness here in America. We are going to learn something…”

“in the next few days we are going to learn something about tax fairness here in America. We are going to learn something about the heart and soul of the two major political parties, my party, the Democratic Party, and the other party, the Republican Party. We are going to learn who each of those parties defends and who each of those parties serves and who each of those parties is willing to fight for. Mr. Speaker, almost 2 months ago, the President and the budget leadership from the two major parties reached agreement on a balanced budget by the year 2002, and they agreed on a tax cut, to boot, in that process. Now there is a lot of disagreement as to exactly who is supposed to get that tax cut, but the amount of the tax cut is agreed upon by both parties over a 5-year period and a 10-year period. Let me put that at family level. There are roughly 100 million families in America, and the agreement calls for roughly $100 billion of tax cut over 5 years. That is roughly $1,000 per family.”