[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 50 (Thursday, March 27, 2003)]
[House]
[Page H2405]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    PRESIDENT SHOULD DEFER TAX CUTS

  (Mr. FORD asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. FORD. Mr. Speaker, I want to make one appeal to the President and 
my Republican colleagues, and Democrats as well. We are a few days 
away, if not a few weeks away, from debating a tax cut bill that all of 
us wish and desire, for all of those here and those watching, could 
receive at home. We have one problem, though.
  We have committed some 300,000 and, if the papers are to be believed 
this morning, an additional 30,000 troops will be deployed overseas. 
The President has his hands full, as does the national security team, 
in defining our goals clearly in Iraq. Yet their domestic team 
continues to try to advance an enormous tax cut, which all of us again 
want.
  The problem we face is we have States that are struggling, we have a 
budget that is out of balance, we have a war that needs to be paid for, 
and we have all of our domestic needs.
  Mr. Speaker, I ask the President in the most humble of ways: defer 
your tax cut, defer new spending. Let us do two things first: one, help 
the States; and, two, pay for this war. After that, all of the tax cuts 
and stimulus and spending programs that all of us may want, let us 
consider those things in that context.
  I say to the President: defer your tax cuts, sir, and help our 
States.

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