David Price: “That is the $9.4 trillion reversal. And the analysts asked, Where did that money go? The largest chunk of it went to…”

“That is the $9.4 trillion reversal. And the analysts asked, Where did that money go? The largest chunk of it went to President Bush's tax cuts, which mainly benefit the wealthiest people in this country. A significant chunk of it went to defense and security spending after 9/11. And of course in many ways we have had agreement that that spending needs to increase, but it is not the bulk of the increase we are talking about. It is not the bulk of the fiscal reversal that we are talking about. The poor economy produced some of that. So there are many reasons for this. The tax cuts are the main reason. But the one thing that does not figure prominently in the fiscal reversal is domestic discretionary spending. That has not been all that much above projected levels. So the strategy of the administration and the strategy of the Republican leadership here in the House to pretend that we are going broke in this country because of these domestic investments, who can believe that? Who can believe we are going too broke because we are doing too much cancer research or because we are building too many highways? The chart here pretty well tells the story. The Republican tax agenda worsens the deficit by $2 trillion. And the gentleman can confirm, we are talking about $1.4 trillion over the next 10 years and a worsened deficit situation because of the Bush tax cuts. And then if we take account of the alternative minimum tax and fix that, then that is another $600 billion.…”