Bill Bennett: “I happen to have another chart. I will get to that if the Senator will be patient. I appreciate his willingness to…”

“I happen to have another chart. I will get to that if the Senator will be patient. I appreciate his willingness to listen. Back to 2004, we see once again the impact of the soft patch. We see that if we are going to look at this and say, what can we do to get this money back, the first thing we can do, the best thing we can do, is get rid of this. Fifty-one percent of the whole comes from the weak economy. Another good thing we can do is hold down this: 24 percent comes from increased spending. For those who said, we will solve our deficit problem if we just repeal the tax cut--and we have heard that rhetoric on the floor--no, that is the least effective way to get this back where it belongs. I am glad people who have said let's repeal the tax cut are backing away from that position. Here is another way of demonstrating how the projections went wrong and the impact of the spending. These were the revenues in that boom time. And then we began to see the revenues start to slack off just as outlays that were increasing at one level began to increase very sharply. Here again is the responsibility of where we are. Here is the chart answering the question about the impact of the President's growth plan. This shows the total taxes that will be paid in the next 11 years, $29.3 trillion. And the President's growth plan says we will have $725 billion, or 2.4 percent of that amount, that will come out of the overall pie.”