I support extending the 2001 and 2003 income tax cuts for all taxpayers, reducing or even eliminating the estate tax, and limiting the impact of the alternative minimum tax. If those were the only issues before us today, I would vote for that package to reduce the tax burden on Americans. But this package is a bridge too far and I will vote no. With this package we are saying ``charge it.'' We aren't even making an attempt to pay for it. We are voting to add over $857 billion to our Nation's already massive, nearly $14 trillion debt. This is less than two weeks after the president's debt commission issued its a report called ``A Moment of Truth,'' which outlined the looming financial crisis that threatens the future of our country. We're accumulating a trillion dollar deficit every year. This year, we are paying $202 billion a year in interest on our debt. That's nearly $4 billion a week. By 2021, we will pay nearly $1 trillion a year solely to service the debt. One trillion. That's nearly $19 billion a week or $2.7 billion a day. Two point seven billion dollars a day just to pay the interest. That is utterly unsustainable. And money that goes to paying off the interest, let alone the principle, on the debt is money that will not be invested in road construction, or cancer research, or homeland security, or math and science education.
On the recordDecember 16, 2010
Editor's note · Context
The speaker addresses concerns about the financial implications of a tax cut package.
Share
More from Tom Wolf
Oct 30, 2020
We've had three million people registered to vote by mail. We have a record nine million people who have registered to vote in this election.
Oct 30, 2020
We actually -- and I say we, Pennsylvania has a Republican majority in the Senate and the House and Republicans actually got together with me. And we put together in 2019 the most dramatic change in Pennsylvania's voting laws in 80 years.
Jul 30, 2014
I want to share two pictures showing the tomb of the prophet Jonah in Mosul, Iraq. The first shows Jonah's tomb as it looked for centuries prior to last week. The second shows the site after it was destroyed by ISIS last week. Thousands of…





