On the recordApril 8, 2014
I would just point out that I think it is useful to look at this through the perspective of history, because the last time we had balanced budgets in this country was at the end of the Clinton administration, and shortly after that, when President Bush came into office, we saw back-to-back tax cuts. The theory at that time was if you dropped the top tax rate on high- income individuals, it will trickle down to everybody else and power- charge the economy. The only problem is that didn't work. It did not work at all. The trickle-down theory of economics did not work. We didn't get that boost of economic growth. What we did get was huge, huge deficits as far as the eye could see. And so the problem with this budget is that it is a U-turn back to that philosophy--the idea that we are going to provide these tax cuts and it will create a big boost of economic activity. But reality has shown that it doesn't work that way. We should be building our economy from the middle out and from the bottom up. The top-down approach doesn't work. I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Johnson), a distinguished member of the Armed Services Committee.
