Amory Houghton: “I wish this were a little more evenly balanced in terms of a bipartisan approach, but evidently we are dealing with…”

“I wish this were a little more evenly balanced in terms of a bipartisan approach, but evidently we are dealing with things which have been triggered by the White House, and we have to follow that route. Look, there are certain things about the Republican bill that I do not particularly like. It is a very uncertain future. Who knows what is going to happen in 10 years? Also, there are some things in terms of child credits and in terms of a whole variety of things such as alternative minimum taxes that maybe should be considered, but there are certain things we do know. We know we are dealing with a huge surplus, a gargantuan surplus; and irrespective of what happens here in terms of the economy, we have a lot of area to play with. And it seems to me that what we want to do is to stretch and give as much as possible back to the people, where this money came from. I used to be in business, and if one said to the stockholders and the employers in the business, look, we have been losing money for 30 years, which is exactly what the Federal Government has done, and now we are beginning to make a little bit, and what we want to do is to thank you for holding with us and we want to give you a dividend increase, we want to give you a salary increase; we are going to pay back our debts, but we are not going to pay them back all at once without taking care of you, we are going to do it in a balanced way.”