Emanuel Cleaver: “I agree with you that we are taxed heavily in this country, all the way from these Chambers, this Chamber all the way to…”

“I agree with you that we are taxed heavily in this country, all the way from these Chambers, this Chamber all the way to city halls around the country. But I do believe in tax cuts, and I think that we would be wise or certainly we would have been wise to have some tax credits to the corporations who engage in a certain amount of research and development. I think if the tax credits can be linked to research and development, then we know that those dollars are going to recirculate, they are going to come back into the budget. I also think that we ought to give tax credits, that the one we had has expired, for parents who are sending their children to college, they ought to get tax credits. We are going to be locked into a very, very tough competitive battle with India, with China, with Japan, and even with Taiwan; and so we have got to educate as many children as possible, and we have got to make it easy for parents to pay for that college. But the reason we won't be able to do that, and this is another thing that should cause us to reconsider the tax cuts, is the interest payments on the debt. Now, the interest payments are obligatory, and it is right now the third largest expenditure in the United States Federal budget; and that is very, very dangerous. We can cut Veterans Affairs, we can cut homeland security, we can cut education; but we can't cut net interest because the interest on the debt is obligatory.…”