John Spratt: “The bottom line is we charge the tab to our children. We have a deficit today. This fiscal year the deficit will…”

“The bottom line is we charge the tab to our children. We have a deficit today. This fiscal year the deficit will probably be somewhere between 300 and $350 billion. If we adopt additional tax cuts, they will go straight to the bottom line and only make the deficit larger. Now, the tax cuts envisioned by this estate tax extension will come in the outer years because we are still increasing the exemptions and lowering the rate applicable to decedents' estates right now under old law. This will mean that in the first 10 years that this estate tax provision is fully implemented, the first 10 years when it is fully effective, the cost will be somewhere between 700 and $800 billion in revenues lost or foregone. Seven to $800 billion during that period of time. And that will be a period of time when the baby boomers will be beginning to retire in big numbers and starting to draw Social Security and Medicare, and we all know both of those programs are going to be strained under the load of the baby boomers' retirement.”