David Obey: “I want tax cuts that are aimed, for instance, at small businessmen so they can help provide health insurance for their…”

“I want tax cuts that are aimed, for instance, at small businessmen so they can help provide health insurance for their employees. I know what it is like to run a small business on a 1 percent or 2 percent profit. I do not want tax cuts that provide 73 percent of their benefits to the wealthiest 1 or 2 percent of the people in this country. I have nothing against those folks, but when we give 73 percent of the tax benefits to the very wealthiest 1 or 2 percent, we do indeed precipitate class warfare, and Members cannot object when the average working family asks their representatives to fight back. I also do not want tax cuts that are so large that they get in the way of our protecting Medicare and Social Security, and that require the kind of reductions from the President's budget that this bill has in education, that it has in health care, that it has in the National Science Foundation, that it has in a range of other programs that help build this country. Mr. Chairman, we are the strong country we are today because we have always tried to be in everything together.”