Kent Conrad: “Madam President, I thank very much Senator Baucus for his leadership on this very important amendment. This amendment is…”

“Madam President, I thank very much Senator Baucus for his leadership on this very important amendment. This amendment is to reassure all those who have benefited from the middle-class tax cuts that those tax cuts will go forward, that those children who are not now currently covered under the SCHIP legislation will have the opportunity to be covered. The Senator has also provided for small business because we have a number of provisions that are critically important to small business and, of course, to prevent the estate tax from having this bizarre outcome, which is now in the law, where the exemption would go down to $1 million from $3.5 million just two years before. That makes no sense. So the Senator provides for room in this amendment to deal with estate tax reform. The precise contours of that will be up to, obviously, the Finance Committee. The Senator is providing the resources to provide for the middle-class tax cuts, to have estate tax reform, to have SCHIP funded so those kids will be funded, and to have critical elements of small business covered as well. I appreciate very much the leadership the Senator has provided in putting this amendment together. All of us know if those provisions came to the floor, they would enjoy broad bipartisan support. In fact, they would probably get supermajorities. They might get 70 votes on the Senate floor.”