On the recordApril 14, 2011
I sit and listen to the conversation and the debate, and it is as if we are reading two entirely different documents. I feel like the Republicans are being portrayed as if they are going to have a horn grow out of their heads and immediately rush into homes and jerk out the poor and those that are on Social Security and the needy. If you read the document, we are dealing with two central issues. The first of those issues is $14 trillion in debt. Now, we can ignore that fact or we can begin to take it on and make serious decisions and have serious adult conversations. The second issue that we take on is this one simple principle: Do we have a spending problem, or do we have a tax problem in America? In other words, do we need to tax a lot more, or do we need to spend less? I think if you look at the rate of how we have been spending in America versus how we are taxing in America, you would say we have a spending issue. In our current time there are all these statements that are being made that Republicans want to protect the corporations, Republicans want to be able to give all these benefits to the wealthy. Here's what we want to do with the tax rate: Leave it where it is now. That's not a 30 percent cut. That's not anything else. Where it is right now, that's the rate that we need to keep.
