Kent Conrad: “on another subject, I noticed in today's Washington Times a story headlined: ``White House to Show Triumph of Tax Cuts…”

“on another subject, I noticed in today's Washington Times a story headlined: ``White House to Show Triumph of Tax Cuts, Says Recession Stalled Jobs Added.'' This is a news story that comes as a result of a speech later today to the Council on Foreign Relations by Vice President Cheney, and it indicates that he will present findings by the President's Council of Economic Advisers as an answer to Democratic critics of the tax cut. The findings the Vice President will discuss show the third quarter growth last year would have contracted at an annual rate of 2.5 percent instead of the reported 1.3 percent without the tax relief. That should not be any great surprise to anybody. What is surprising is the Republicans attempting to claim credit for the tax cuts that occurred last year. We should not rewrite the history of what occurred. Last year, it was the Democrats who were proposing much greater tax relief than the President's proposal because we believed we needed to give lift to the economy. Here are the facts. For 2002, the President's budget proposed almost no tax relief. The Democratic budget proposed $60 billion of tax relief last year. Those are the facts. Absolutely, Democrats were for more tax relief last year than the President proposed because we thought we needed to give lift to the economy. In fact, we actually passed even greater tax relief than that. But this is what was in our budget. That is what was in the President's budget.”