Mark Warner: “I am going to speak and make a unanimous consent request in a moment, and I am so anxious because a number of my…”

“I am going to speak and make a unanimous consent request in a moment, and I am so anxious because a number of my Republican colleagues--I remember being in middle school as well. You don't want to be the first; you don't want to be the last. Unfortunately, that is where we rank right now in terms of comparison to OECD, in terms of raising corporate revenue. I don't think that is fair for hard-working Americans. And the ranking member on the Senate Finance Committee is someone that I have huge, huge respect for and have worked with on many, many items. We are going to have a chance to debate part of these components, I think, going forward. But I would say this. When I first got the note: Well, the Senator from Idaho--it was one of my first times I was a gang member. The Senator from Idaho and I were part of something called the ``Gang of Six,'' and we were audacious enough to think that a proposal put forward by the so-called Simpson-Bowles Commission to take on the debt and deficit issues in our country was worthwhile and worth us both, frankly, offending folks in each of our respective parties. We were astonished that in the 2010-2011 timeframe, the country was looking at $15 trillion of debt. We, obviously, were not very successful, since we are now at about $27 trillion in debt; and, I would argue, both sides bear lots of responsibility. I believe we cut revenues way too much.…”