Russ Feingold: “as the bipartisan stampede for tax cuts begins here in the 104th Congress, I would like to raise a dissenting voice.…”

“as the bipartisan stampede for tax cuts begins here in the 104th Congress, I would like to raise a dissenting voice. Like every other elected official, I would really like to be able to support a tax cut for middle-class Americans. In fact, it would be great to be able to support a tax cut for all Americans. That is usually a very pleasant opportunity for an elected official to vote for that kind of tax cut. I think it is the wrong thing to do right now, when we have just begun to make headway on reducing the Federal deficit. This new tax cut fever is just the most recent example of how far we seem to be straying in the path toward economic stability. We started moving in the right direction with deficit reduction in 1993, but I think in 1994, we started to stray from the path a little. Now, there are just far too many signs that not only are we straying from the path, but that we are about to make a complete U-turn and head back toward soaring deficits, a mounting national debt, and putting off until tomorrow the fiscal housecleaning that is so desperately needed today. Let me just tick off very quickly some of the bad signs that we are about to move in the wrong direction. One is that the Republican Contract With America, frankly, lays out what I think is an irresponsible plan that proposes a balanced Federal budget and, at the same time, says we are going to have major tax cuts and a significant increase in military spending.”