Sylvester Turner: “Mr. Speaker, it is time for this Congress to start being honest with the American people. Last June I was among a…”

“Mr. Speaker, it is time for this Congress to start being honest with the American people. Last June I was among a majority of this House that voted for the largest tax cut in the history of this country. The official estimate at that time of the surplus were that we could anticipate over $5 trillion in surpluses over the decade. We spent half of that on the tax cut. Here we are just one year later and the balance of that surplus is gone. In fact, the projections are that we have deficits as far as the eye can see. The question that we should be debating on this floor today is not how many additional tax cuts can we give, but the issue we should be debating is who is going to pay the bills. We all have stood united with our President, Democrats and Republicans alike, in a commitment to fund whatever is necessary to win this war on terrorism and to protect the security of the homeland. But my Republican colleagues refuse to acknowledge that we should not only vote to spend the money for the war, but that we should be willing to pay the bills for this war. Instead, they bring a new tax cut on the floor every week. You would think that September 11 has never happened.”