Byron Dorgan: “a number of us this morning want to visit about the issue of tax cuts. We are having a debate--I was going to say a…”

“a number of us this morning want to visit about the issue of tax cuts. We are having a debate--I was going to say a dispute, but it is more a debate--in Congress, between the House and the Senate and between Members of both parties, about how taxes should be cut. It is clear now from the votes in the House and the Senate that there will be a tax cut. We do have bills in conference that call for a tax cut in a number of different ways--cuts in the income tax, cuts in estate tax, cuts in capital gains and a range of other areas. But there is substantial debate about who gets what. Mr. President, the debate is not idle, and it is not just political. I suppose there is some partisanship involved in this as well, but when you say that the Federal Government has the capability of reducing taxes for the American people, the question then is, for whom and by how much and with what purpose? The stakes are fairly large because we are talking about a fairly substantial tax reduction, and the question is how to divide that.”