Byron Dorgan: “I want to talk today about a debate that is going on in a conference committee on who gets what portion of the tax cut…”

“I want to talk today about a debate that is going on in a conference committee on who gets what portion of the tax cut that is now proposed by the Congress. It is, I suppose, a debate that one would expect if the Congress decides there shall be a tax cut, and the Congress has decided that taxes shall be reduced in some measure for the American people. The obvious question is, for whom and for how much? Who gets the benefit of the tax cut? We had a generous discussion on the floor of the Senate with an enormous amount of data and charts, with each side demonstrating that it is right and the other side is wrong, and each side using economists and all of the research groups that say this side is right, that side is wrong, or that side is right, this side is wrong. I suspect people watching this do not have the foggiest understanding of how you manufacture all these numbers. It is like making sausage, I assume-- somebody over there, huddled over a bowl, is throwing all kinds of things in a bowl, and they grind it out and say, 'Here's our sausage.'”