Joe Cunningham: “my colleagues will continually bash Ronald Reagan; they will continually say tax breaks for the rich, but it just is not…”

“my colleagues will continually bash Ronald Reagan; they will continually say tax breaks for the rich, but it just is not so. They can spend, they can try and rewrite history, but it just will not work. The fact is that the left cannot stand tax relief, even if it is for the middle class. They increased the middle-class tax in 1993, they increased the tax on Social Security, they increased the gas tax, they cut the military, they even gave us a retroactive tax, if my colleagues remember that. Not many people remember that one. We have tried to go back, and we have reduced the Social Security tax; we have given working families and their children a $500 deduction. Capital gains paid for itself; ask Alan Greenspan. It gives us lower interest rates, putting Social Security into a lock box; it helps us pay down the debt, the national debt, which will take away from our children the burden that is on our backs. Yet my colleagues on the other side, in every single one of these bills, you watch, line item by line item, they want to spend more money, spend more money for this; and we could spend this if it was not for the tax break for the rich. I can see my colleagues do not like that, but it is the truth. Over and over and over again, they cannot stand tax relief. That is why they fought us on the balanced budget; that is why they fought us on welfare reform, because it takes their ability to spend away.”