Kent Conrad: “I was speaking to people in my State, and one person in my audience said: You know, the President says that it is the…”

“I was speaking to people in my State, and one person in my audience said: You know, the President says that it is the people's money and we ought to give it back to the people. Well, that is absolutely true. This person in the audience said: But it is turning out that it is the Chinese people's money, the Japanese people's money. That is whose money we are giving back. We are having to borrow from them to give it back. This is a bizarre situation that we are in, but that is what is happening. Some say, well, if you borrow the money, somehow it will pay off. Let's make sure that Chairman Greenspan doesn't believe that. He said this before the Joint Economic Committee: We should not be cutting taxes by borrowing. We are borrowing in huge amounts. This is his statement on restoring the pay-go provisions that we tried hard to get restored, which say you can have additional tax cuts, but you ought to pay for them. You can have new spending, but you ought to pay for it. He said this on March 2 before the House Budget Committee: All I am saying is that my general view is I like to see the tax burden as low as possible. And in that context, I would like to see tax cuts continued. But as I indicated earlier, that has got to be, in my judgment, in the context of a pay-go resolution. That is what we offered to our colleagues, but they didn't accept it. Here are the major provisions in this package. It cuts low-income beneficiaries in Medicaid. It cuts child support.…”