Charles W. Stenholm: “I want to thank those making this period of time available today to further the discussion of the bill that was vetoed…”

“I want to thank those making this period of time available today to further the discussion of the bill that was vetoed and then sustained earlier today. I would gather that anyone listening to the debate today was rather confused about what was in the bills or what was not in the bills or what the effect would be. But to do this, to set the stage for this, I think it is important for us to go back and to review the budget debates earlier this year. And I want to speak on behalf again of the Blue Dog budget, the Blue Dog Coalition, that proposed a budget that got 171 votes, a majority of the Democrats, and 33 Republicans, joined with us when we were debating. And we thought this year's budget debates should be built around a framework that would put our government on a path of retiring and entirely eliminating our public debt by 2010. We thought it was important to save 100 percent of the Social Security and Medicare surpluses. And we thought it important to allow a net tax cut, net tax cut of $387 billion over 10 years targeted to small businesses and middle-income families and make investments in priority programs of $387 billion over the same 10-year period. That became known as the 50/25/25 plan, taking any non-Social Security surpluses and taking 50 percent of that to pay down the debt.”