Mr. President, I strongly oppose the tax deal now before the Senate. While I support tax relief for working and middle-income Americans, I am not willing to add $858 billion to the national debt in order to give enormous tax breaks to multimillionaires. One of the biggest mistakes in the last administration was to wage two wars without paying for them while cutting taxes for the wealthiest. We should not repeat that mistake by rubberstamping this agreement between President Obama and congressional Republicans for a wholesale extension and expansion of the Bush-era tax cuts for 2 more years. I voted against the Bush-era tax cuts that were tilted heavily toward the very wealthiest Americans. I also voted against going to war in Iraq. Those may not have been the most popular votes at the time, but the relative few in the Senate who cast them were voting for a path that would have averted much of the economic turmoil that has roiled the economy, the budget and the lives of ordinary American families since then. If we are truly committed to helping our economy recover from the Great Recession and to putting our country back on the glide path to fiscal responsibility, then we should not extend all of the Bush-era tax cuts. These enormous tax cuts have led to record federal deficits, contributed to the government's current financial woes, and have not helped many Americans who face the greatest financial burdens.…
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