Pete Sessions: “I thank Senators Domenici and Grassley for their courageous effort to make sure this body has a full chance to vote on…”

“I thank Senators Domenici and Grassley for their courageous effort to make sure this body has a full chance to vote on the President's tax cut proposal. It has been objected to by a host of procedural objections in a desperate effort to throw it off track, but we are going to get that vote up, I believe, and have a chance to let the American people fully consider the issue. The question I want to raise is why do we have this extraordinary surplus? Why are we having big surpluses this year? In fact, we were told recently, within the last week, that even though we have had a slowdown in this year's economy, our projection of last year underestimates the surplus we will have this year--maybe by 20 or more billion dollars. We will see how it turns out. But even with this slowdown, we have more coming in than we projected and we have had more coming in for the last 3 years than has been projected by the CBO or OMB. Why is it happening? It is because the Federal Government not only is taking in more, and not only are the American people making more, the Federal Government is taking a larger percentage. It is taking a larger percentage of America's wealth--too much. In 1992, the Federal Government took 17.6 percent of the total gross domestic product, all that we make and manufacture in the United States. Today it has hit 20.7 percent, a monumental increase.”