John Thune: “in probably a few minutes we are going to be voting on whether to extend the tax relief that was passed by this Congress…”

“in probably a few minutes we are going to be voting on whether to extend the tax relief that was passed by this Congress in 2001 and 2003, and thereby give the markets in this economy some certainty about what the rules are going to be. Frankly, that is something that investors need to know. They need to know for tax consequence purposes whether Congress is going to be changing the law, whether Congress is going to be raising taxes. I think there is probably no better issue that illustrates the differences in philosophy between the two political parties in the Senate than does this one because it is the question of who spends the money. Do the American people spend the money? Do the taxpayers in the country get to spend their own money? Or do they send it to Washington, DC, so the politicians can spend it? You have heard a lot of debate from both sides on this issue. If you look at the statistics, it is pretty clear that beginning in 2003--of course, there were tax cuts in 2001 and then subsequent tax cuts in 2003--the economy has behaved in a remarkable way. That proves, once again, that the lessons of history have a tendency to repeat themselves. If you go back clear to the 1920s under President Harding when you cut taxes, when you cut marginal tax rates, you get not less revenue but you get more government revenue.…”