Max Baucus: “all Members ought to think and reflect upon this amendment and how important this amendment is. First of all, let me…”

“all Members ought to think and reflect upon this amendment and how important this amendment is. First of all, let me explain what this amendment does and what it does not do. What does it not do? It does not prevent any of the middle-income tax cuts we all want to extend. It does not do that. It does not prevent those tax cuts. It does not prevent Congress from enacting an extension of those tax cuts that we all want to extend. This amendment has no effect on that. What does it do? It says we should not use the regular Senate rules in deciding whether to extend and how to extend the middle-income tax cuts; that is, the child tax credit, the marriage penalty, and the 10-percent bracket. It says no, create a special rule. Do not use the regular order, the regular standing rules of the Senate in determining how and in what way we extend those middle-income tax credits. This amendment does say do not do that. And Congress will extend those middle-income tax cuts. That is not the issue. We are going to do that. The issue is twofold. One is, should we pay for them or not? That is the issue. And there are lots of ways we could pay for it, lots of ways that are virtually painless. What are those virtually painless ways? Closing a lot of tax loopholes. There are countless tax loopholes that we can pass very quickly, shelters that are ripping off American taxpayers, post-Enron provisions. There are a host of them. We talk about SILOs, for example.…”