Steve Rothman: “It was an honest answer, and I thanked him for that. He said that it was wasteful, and he said that is the budget that…”

“It was an honest answer, and I thanked him for that. He said that it was wasteful, and he said that is the budget that the President gave me. My subcommittee had a hearing today and we had the Secretary of the Treasury in front of us, Mr. Snow. I said Mr. Secretary, a lot of people say that tax cuts that go to the richest people in the country, people making over a million dollars a year, but if you added up all of the tax cuts, people say that we get money back from the tax cuts and it fills up the government coffers far beyond what we cut in terms of taxes to the rich. Another honest answer, he said, Congressman Rothman, for every dollar we cut in taxes, we only get back to the Federal treasury about 30 or 40 cents. For every dollar we cut in taxes, we only get back 30 or 40 cents. I said, Wait a minute, what about the supply side notion and all this talk about the economic growth generating revenues? He said, Well, that is the consensus of opinion, that for every dollar of taxes cut, we only get back 30 or 40 cents. I said, Wait a minute, we are losing money every time we do a tax cut and then you tell veterans in this budget, the Bush budget, veterans have to pay more for their health care and poor people have to pay more for their prescription drugs. A family who wants to send their child to college has to pay another $2,000 or $3,000 a year. There is money for nothing but tax cuts.…”