Charles Rangel: “Well, here we go again. My friends on the other side of the aisle want to give away surplus revenue before the surpluses…”

“Well, here we go again. My friends on the other side of the aisle want to give away surplus revenue before the surpluses even materialize. I support marriage penalty tax relief. I will save the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Weller), my friend on the other side of the aisle, the time and trouble of citing the statistics in my district. There are 51,222 married couples in my district, and they would get relief under the Rangel substitute which I intend to support. But I would also point out that more than twice as many people, 112,262 constituents in my district receive Social Security and Medicare benefits; and they will not get protection under the Republican bill. We have had 30 years of deficit spending. There is enough blame to go around for all of that and the tremendous national debt that has resulted. Now we have an era of surpluses, and we are going to decide what to do with the extra money. But what is the size of the surplus? I am amused by all these guesstimates. Six months ago, the CBO said that it was going to be a trillion dollars, and we all started to divvy up that money.”