Kent Conrad: “I rise to comment briefly on the agreement that has now been reached between negotiators on the budget and tax package.…”

“I rise to comment briefly on the agreement that has now been reached between negotiators on the budget and tax package. That agreement will soon be before us. I would like to put what has happened in some historical perspective. I have been reading and listening to the commentary over the last several days of how we got to the position we are in today, in which we can consider significant tax relief and continue on a path to balance the unified budget by the year 2002. I think we have to go back to 1993 when President Clinton came into office and faced a $290 billion deficit he had inherited from the year before. I think we have to go back to the economic plan that he laid on the table to get our fiscal house in order and to lay the basis for strong economic growth. When we go back to that period, I think we remember the situation we confronted. Deficits had been growing, were out of control. There were many who wondered if the best years of the United States were behind us. The President put out an economic plan that proposed cutting spending. It also proposed higher taxes on the wealthiest among us, asking the wealthiest 1 percent in this country to pay higher income taxes. That plan passed the Congress. In fact, it passed in this body only because the Vice President of the United States broke a tie and voted in favor.”