Rich Neal: “The debate today is about doing something for the living as opposed to doing something for the dead. We could well…”

“The debate today is about doing something for the living as opposed to doing something for the dead. We could well afford in this institution today to provide a prescription drug benefit that was fixed for Medicare recipients. Instead, we are coming to this floor today to assist those who really do not need it. Let me, if I can, quote again the editorial from the Washington Post that appeared this morning. ``The House will be asked today to approve a tax cut so blatantly irresponsible that the authors have, in effect, had to white out the cost.'' In other words, the phase-in of the estate tax repeal is so slow that the $660 billion cost of immediate repeal has been reduced to $185 billion. That was the point of an amendment offered last week in the Committee on Ways and Means. But there is even a more fundamental point here. It is that the committee majority could not figure out how to handle the true cost of repeal, given their other priorities, so they manipulated the budget rules to make it fit the 10-year window.”