Concurrent Resolution On The Budget For Fiscal Year 2008

Floor Speech

CONCURRENT RESOLUTION ON THE BUDGET FOR FISCAL YEAR 2008 -- (House of Representatives - March 29, 2007)

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Mr. CLYBURN. Thank you very much, Mr. Spratt, for yielding me the time. And I want to thank you for putting together one of the most responsible documents that I have seen in my almost 15 years here in the House of Representatives.

This Democrat budget is a giant step in the right direction. This budget lowers taxes on middle-class families. It does not contain one penny of new taxes. Instead, our budget explicitly provides middle-income tax credits, including the marriage penalty, child tax credit, the 10 percent bracket, and the deduction for State and local taxes.

This House budget provides immediate relief for 23 million middle-income families who would otherwise be subjected to the alternative minimum tax and provides for a permanent fix.

I will tell you what I am particularly appreciative of in this budget. This budget responds to the ongoing recovery for the people of the gulf coast region here in our country. It creates a reserve fund of $3.4 billion and provides an additional $1 billion that could be used to meet urgent recovery needs.

This budget maintains the President's tax cuts for 2008, for 2009 and for 2010; and it says, explicitly, that we can extend tax cuts beyond the sunset that the Republicans put in for 2010. But if we extend these tax cuts, we must subject these tax cuts to the same PAYGO rules that we subject new programs to. So there is no cut here. There is responsibility here. And I thank JOHN SPRATT for meeting that responsibility.

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