[Congressional Record Volume 156, Number 94 (Tuesday, June 22, 2010)]
[Senate]
[Page S5219]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                               NEW TAXES

  Mr. McCONNELL. Madam President, it is now official. Top Democrats on 
Capitol Hill are starting to signal their intention to raise taxes on 
the middle class. The House majority leader in a speech today warned 
that in order to do anything about the debt crisis Republicans have 
been speaking about on the Senate floor in recent weeks, President 
Obama will have no choice, no choice, but to break his campaign pledge 
of ``no new taxes'' for millions of American families.
  That is the majority leader in the House of Representatives in a 
speech today, saying that the President will have no choice but to 
break his promise of no new taxes for millions of American families.
  Respectfully, I think this is a tough argument for the Democratic 
leadership in the House that will not even take up the Senate's version 
of the so-called doc fix legislation for no apparent reason other than 
the fact that it does not increase the debt.
  It is hard to imagine anyone taking advice on fiscal discipline from 
a party that has spent the last 2\1/2\ weeks arguing not about how to 
pay for the extenders bill that is on the floor or how to use this bill 
to cut the debt but about how much money to add to the debt in the 
process of passing it.
  Here is another idea Democrats should consider, one that Americans 
have been proposing loudly and clearly: Stop spending money you do not 
have. Stop spending money you do not have. The American people do not 
think our problem is that the government taxes too little. Our problem 
is that the government taxes too much and that it spends too much and 
borrows too much. Until Democrats demonstrate even the slightest 
ability to restrain the recklessness with which they spend America's 
hard-earned tax dollars, the job creators and the workers of this 
country are not about to take them seriously on how to lower the 
national debt.
  The American people should not be asked to pay the price for 
Democrats' recklessness through higher taxes. America faces a debt 
crisis. Democrats have done nothing whatsoever to show they understand 
that. Breaking a campaign pledge now will not help; cutting spending 
will.
  I yield the floor.

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