Stephanie Herseth Sandlin: “The Blue Dogs believe that the American people are entitled to a tax cut. We believe that we can afford a tax cut, and…”

“The Blue Dogs believe that the American people are entitled to a tax cut. We believe that we can afford a tax cut, and we support tax cuts for the American people. The question is the $1.6 trillion tax cut proposed by the administration too much. On the other hand, is it too little? Could it be just right? We just do not know, and we do not know because we do not have a budget, we do not have a spending plan. We have absolutely no way to judge this tax cut. We do have the opportunity to look at the numbers proposed by CBO and by the administration. And let us look at that for just a moment and see where we are. The CBO 10-year baseline surplus is $5.644 trillion. When you take off the Social Security surplus and the Medicare surplus, that is $2.5 trillion and $0.4 trillion. That is an available on-budget surplus of $2.7 trillion, and I think it is important that we make a distinction between the available on-line budget surplus, $2.7 trillion, versus the 10-year baseline surplus of $5.644 trillion. Now, let us look at the true cost of the Bush tax cut. The estimate of revenue lost from the basic tax package by the administration is $1.6 trillion.”