David Thomas: “we do want to talk this morning, however, about an item of great importance to all of us--the citizens and to all of us…”

“we do want to talk this morning, however, about an item of great importance to all of us--the citizens and to all of us as Members of the Senate--and that is taxation, the question that will be before the Senate this week, as the Finance Committee has completed their work on the reconciliation bill, and we will now be addressing that. We will be talking about tax relief, which I suspect is perhaps one of the most important topics we will talk about this entire year, not only because of the tax aspect of it because, as you go into the budget process, it seems to me that budgets are much more than just numbers, they are much more than various spending proposals, they sort of set the parameters of what we will be doing in Government for at least the coming year; in this case, at least 5 years. These decisions will frame the size of the Government over time. If you prefer smaller governments or larger governments--I happen to prefer smaller ones--the budget has to do with that. The budget has to do with the kinds of priorities that we will set among programs, among the kinds of things that we do.…”