Political Quotes

“Mr. President, first, I want to thank my friend Senator Nelson for his comments from the floor in regard to the tax bill that we will be voting on later this week. The experience I had this morning underscores the issues that Senator Nelson has brought to the floor. I had a meeting with the Greater Baltimore Committee. We had business leaders, labor leaders; we had advocates from different segments of our community; and we had graduate students there. They all expressed concern about our voting this week on a tax bill that we first saw on Friday evening--the latest version. It is still fundamentally flawed, as Senator Nelson has pointed out. I say that it is fundamentally flawed because it gives significant, big tax cuts to corporations and high-income taxpayers and leaves middle- income taxpayers footing the bill. The conference report makes it worse because they lower the highest tax rate from 39.6 percent to 37 percent--another advantage for high- income taxpayers. In addition, the estate tax is doubled, which affects 0.2 percent of the wealthiest people in this country. Corporations not only get the lower tax rates cut from 35 percent to 21 percent, but they also get relief from the alternative minimum tax. To make matters even worse, the tax relief for middle-income families is temporary, whereas the tax relief for businesses is made permanent. It is definitely a tax bill that is going to hurt middle-income taxpayers.…”