Political Quotes

“I thank my colleague from Oklahoma. I wish to follow up briefly on that and say that in 1997, when we decided to move toward a balanced budget agreement when President Clinton was President, there was also an agreement to cut the capital gains rate. We sometimes forget the capital gains rate cut produced a lot of revenue that was not expected. As a result, we got to a unified balanced budget on a unified basis more rapidly than anybody thought we would. It came 2 or 3 years sooner than projected, in part because there was about $100 billion of new revenue that showed up the next year from the fact that we did reduce the capital gains rates. I understand the need for us to deal with the deficit and to have revenue. There is no question that this is necessary, but to do it by raising rates alone, which is what is being proposed by some people, is going to result in lower economic growth, it is going to result in job loss, and it is not going to have the intended benefit on the revenue side. The alternative is clear, which is, for the first time in a couple of decades, we need to get busy on reforming this Tax Code as Ronald Reagan did with Democratic help, including Democratic Senators such as Phil Bradley here in the U.S. Senate, to encourage growth and to encourage the kind of economic growth that is going to result in more revenue coming in. We should not miss this opportunity to do that. As I said earlier, I believe there is a building consensus around that.…”