Chuck Schumer: “Well, we will, maybe with the help of the Senator from Texas. In any case, that person in the example does not qualify.…”

“Well, we will, maybe with the help of the Senator from Texas. In any case, that person in the example does not qualify. The second question I ask my colleague is this. I like his chart. It sort of fits my argument because that last number is $600 billion. As I understand it, if we did not make the estate tax repeal permanent, something my colleague from Texas has fought very long and hard over, that would be about $670 billion, as I understand it. That is how much it would cost over the same 10-year period. So we are not talking about the ability of the Government to pay this; we are talking about size of government. That is one of the great debates we have. But it is not that my colleague says we cannot afford it; rather, he is using it for different purposes. At least to me, when I go from one end of my State to the other, the number of people who ask for estate tax repeal is much smaller than the number who ask for a comprehensive prescription drug plan for Medicare. So I ask my colleague, aside from the ideological and philosophical argument about size of government and all of that--on which we have had nice debates on both the floor and in our various committees that we share--but certainly within the contemplation of my good friend from Texas, if we did not take that money for estate tax reduction, we could put it into this program; am I right about that? This is a simple value choice.”