Political Quotes

“I thank the senior Senator from Illinois, the assistant majority leader. I concur in the remarks Senator Durbin just made, especially about the vote last night. The primary thing we did was we spared that $2,000 tax increase for so many families in California, Illinois, Ohio, and across this country. I remember the Presiding Officer telling a group of us last night how many hundreds of thousands of Californians would have lost their unemployment insurance if we had not acted last night the way we did. My fundamental criteria on voting on this issue and voting for this issue was we were able successfully to stop cuts in Social Security to pay for some of this plan or raising the retirement age for Medicare or not doing the unemployment insurance in the way we did. So all those were victories last night. I also concur with Senator Durbin that while adding 5 years to the earned-income tax credit, locking in one of the best poverty-fighting programs to be begun by Ronald Reagan, suggested, I believe, by Milton Friedman--supported by both parties for many years--we are not seeing that the way we used to with the earned- income tax credit. It rewards families that work, a family making $30,000 a year. This is not a whole lot more than the minimum wage, $3 or $4 more, maybe, than the minimum wage but not a livable wage, and they get significant tax credits. This is sort of what Friedman called a negative income tax, and this works so well for encouraging work in this country.…”