Max Baucus: “I want everybody to remember these two numbers: 99 percent, 79 percent; 99 percent, 79 percent. What are those two…”

“I want everybody to remember these two numbers: 99 percent, 79 percent; 99 percent, 79 percent. What are those two numbers? If you take the Finance Committee bill, the bill that is in this stimulus bill that the Senate Finance Committee wrote--the Senate Finance Committee wrote the tax portion of the underlying bill and also the aid to States portion. Ninety-nine percent of the spending and the taxes combined in the Finance Committee portion of the bill will be spent out in the first 2 years. Ninety-nine percent of the Finance Committee bill will be spent in the first 2 years. For those who didn't quite get it, it didn't quite compute, I will say it again. Ninety-nine percent of the Finance Committee bill is spent in the first 2 years--99 percent. Actually, if you want to break it down, it is a little more than that for taxes only because some reach to future years. Ninety-nine percent of the Finance Committee bill is spent in the first 2 years. What is my authority on that? Some economists? It is the Joint Committee on Tax and CBO, if you look at their numbers and combine them, the Joint Committee on Tax and the Congressional Budget Office, that is what it calculates to: 99 percent of the Finance Committee bill is spent in the first 2 years, according to the Joint Committee on Tax and according to the CBO, combining the two.”