Thomas Daschle: “many Members have said for some time while we strongly support a tax cut, we have been very concerned about the flaws in…”

“many Members have said for some time while we strongly support a tax cut, we have been very concerned about the flaws in this tax cut, concerned because it is based on projections we have grave doubts will ever be realized, budget projections that will be changed as early as July of this year; concerned about the magnitude, the size of the tax cut, and what we know it will do to Social Security and Medicare and how it will take away funds from those extraordinarily important commitments we made to our seniors; concerns we have about our ability to pay down the public debt; concerns we have about our ability to pay for prescription drug benefits or fully fund our education commitments. We have a great number of concerns given the magnitude of this tax cut. We also are concerned about its fairness. This tax cut could be best described as devoting a third, a third, and a third to three very distinct categories of taxpayers. This tax cut gives one-third of the entire benefit to the top 1 percent of all taxpayers. Roughly a third goes to the next 19 percent of all taxpayers. And somewhat less than a third goes to the bottom 80 percent of all taxpayers. That is ultimately, in the second ten-year period, $4 trillion divided into a third, a third, and a third--a third for the top 1 percent, a third for the next 19 percent, and a third for the bottom 80 percent.”