Rich Neal: “I guess we are not going to wait for this pleasant moment here when the President and the Senate hang this party in the…”

“I guess we are not going to wait for this pleasant moment here when the President and the Senate hang this party in the House, the majority party, out to dry on these issues, because very few of the suggestions they have had today are ever going to be enacted into law. Somebody was talking about show business. The Secretary of the Treasury talked about show business. He said the Republican proposal was show business. Unless he has turned in his party registration, I think he is one of them. Now, the Republican alternative today is composed of some well-worn tax items that have been around for a long time. Some of them perhaps have some merit; but by and large, if we really want to talk about items that might have merit today, in reference to the gentleman from Pennsylvania, we should be here doing something about the individual alternative minimum tax for real people caught in the middle of perhaps a decision that has outlived its usefulness. But these are two very different proposals today. Ours deals with the immediacy of the problem in front of us in the aftermath of September 11. One side clings to that old, tired economic philosophy of trickle-down economics.”