Sylvester Turner: “The Blue Dog Democrats led the effort during this past week to try to urge this Congress to adopt a budget first before…”

“The Blue Dog Democrats led the effort during this past week to try to urge this Congress to adopt a budget first before we take the important votes on tax cuts for the American people. The Blue Dogs and the 33 Members that are members of that coalition believe very strongly that our future prosperity depends upon our ability as a Congress to stay on the course of fiscal responsibility. In order to provide tax cuts to the American people, in order to ensure our future prosperity, we believe that we must look at the whole budget picture of the United States before we can determine what size tax cuts we can afford. The Blue Dogs as fiscal conservatives want the largest tax cut that we can afford. We believe very strongly that we need tax relief, and we want to vote for tax relief for the American people; but we also understand very clearly that it is important to give equal priority to paying down our $5.5 trillion national debt.”