Mark Warner: “I thank the Senator from Illinois for laying out the facts, but there is one additional fact--again, vis-a-vis the Bush…”

“I thank the Senator from Illinois for laying out the facts, but there is one additional fact--again, vis-a-vis the Bush tax cuts--that I think has been absent from some of this debate. The efforts of the Senator from Illinois--Herculean as it was--to try to get 11 out of 18 votes, and all the painful choices the Senator made in terms of spending cuts, raising revenues, opening, as I think the Senator appropriately said, the whole question of tax expenditures, if my memory is correct, over the next decade-plus, the commission's plan--as dramatic as it was and as controversial as it was--basically took out about $4 trillion.”