Bill Pascrell: “the tax cut in the Republican proposal for 2004 is a tax cut of $1.4 trillion, which is very close to the cost of the…”

“the tax cut in the Republican proposal for 2004 is a tax cut of $1.4 trillion, which is very close to the cost of the war effort. I find that not only to be interesting, but something that we need to take a look at very, very closely. I think, when all is said and done on all of these different budget proposals, the one thing I think is absolutely sure is we have reverse socialism. What we are doing here is redistributing the wealth of this country to the top. John McCain was right-on when he said that 3 rac{1}{2} weeks ago. We have been accused on this side of the aisle year after year of trying to manipulate the budget, to manufacture the budget, so the money is going to be shifted down to those people who are making less than $50,000 a year. This is not the case over the next 10 years. We have a redistributing of the dollar upward. That is a fact of life. Yet what we have done at the same time, not because one side of the aisle thinks more of the veterans of this country than the other, but in order to fit it into their budget, what they had to do is nickel and dime the veterans, who have already put their lives on the line. Yet we send young men and women to war. What guarantee are we going to give them when they come back that their benefits are going to be intact?”