Byron Dorgan: “this is a debate about a reconciliation process by which a tax cut will occur. I think most Members of this Congress…”

“this is a debate about a reconciliation process by which a tax cut will occur. I think most Members of this Congress would, in quiet moments, agree we are unlikely to have 10 years of relentless surpluses. This is truly a triumph of hope over experience, but that is the way politics is sometimes. I want to introduce into the Record a memorandum by Alan Blinder, Gene Sperling, and Jason Furman, three very distinguished economists who have reviewed the assessment of the 51 leading private sector forecasts with respect to recent economic trends on the surplus. I am going to ask consent to have it printed in the Record in its entirety, but essentially they say: . . . altering only the 2001 growth forecast [with the last three months of information] leaving all other projections unchanged, would result in a roughly $215 billion reduction in the unified surplus. . . . They go on to say the effect of the stock market difficulties could well lower the unified surplus by $1 trillion or more. Standard & Poor's DRI, for example, project stock market factors could reduce the unified surplus by more than $1 trillion over the next decade. My point is very simply if we proceed with the size of a tax cut proposed by the Republican Party and by the President and do not experience these surpluses, which is very likely--very likely we will not experience these surpluses--we will head back into big deficits. The discussion is as if these surpluses already exist. They do not.…”