On the recordJuly 27, 2010
You listen to the rhetoric in this hall and you hear a lot of talk from the folks on the other side of the aisle, the Republicans, about the deficit. It's very simple. There are two ways you deal with the deficit. Number one, you reduce spending or, number two, you increase income, and the way you increase income is you have more tax revenue. The two biggest ways you can get more tax revenue is taxing the most wealthy people in the country who can afford it. The Republicans don't want to eliminate the tax cuts to the upper 1 and 2 percent of the population, people making over $250,000 a year, and they don't want require that to be a PAYGO. They just want those people to keep getting those tax breaks that were reduced 8 years ago. They're concerned about the inheritance tax, people that might inherit over $3.5 million a person. They're concerned about them. That's who they're concerned about, not middle class families who got the largest tax cut in history with the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act that not a Republican voted for. It was a Democratic bill, and the balanced budget under the Clinton years, all Democrats, a balanced budget. So if you want to reduce deficits, you need to support the Democrats who do the hard lifting and see that we have revenue as well as responsible spending.
