Judd Gregg: “this may take a further response--and I know the Senator from Texas wants to go forward--to make clear what the budget…”

“this may take a further response--and I know the Senator from Texas wants to go forward--to make clear what the budget does with regard to tax policy. This budget does not do anything outside of a baseline for taxes other than make it possible to extend a series of tax incentives to working Americans that are going to last. These include the research and experimentation tax credit, the deduction for teachers' classroom expenses, deduction for qualified education expenses, deduction for State and local taxes, welfare-to- work credit, work opportunity tax credit, and making sure the alternative minimum tax does not pick up a lot of working Americans which that tax was not supposed to cover. The representation that this budget has language which initiates tax cuts for other people, whether wealthy or not, is simply wrong. The baseline of the budget for the next 5 years assumes what present tax policy is. If the other side of the aisle desires to introduce a bill or proposal which raises taxes outside of the present baseline, if they want to raise taxes on wealthy working Americans, if they want to raise taxes on small business, which is what makes up most of the high tax bracket income in our country, they are perfectly within their right to do so, but they should not represent that this budget does anything in that area other than continue the current baseline.…”