[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 158 (2012), Part 12]
[Senate]
[Page 16545]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                           EXTENDING TAX CUTS

  Mr. UDALL of Colorado. Mr. President, I would like to associate 
myself with the majority leader's remarks. We do need to extend the tax 
cuts for the middle class as soon as possible. That is clearly the 
message the American people sent on November 6 in the nationwide 
election we held.
  I also wish to respond to the comments and the conversation between 
the two leaders over the debt ceiling limit. It is important to 
recognize that when we raise the debt ceiling, all we are doing is 
keeping faith with what Congress has already appropriated, what 
Congress has already made clear we would spend on behalf of our country 
in all the various ways the Federal Government operates. We cannot 
afford to have a situation such as we had August before last where we 
dallied and literally shot our economy and ourselves in the foot by not 
extending the debt ceiling. We saw the rating agencies lower our 
national rating for the first time in history. There is a way to do 
this, to have a mechanism in place so we never again get in a situation 
where the debt ceiling becomes a point of contention and literally 
hurts our economy.
  So, again, I want to say that the majority leader is on track. Let's 
extend these middle-class tax cuts right now and bring some certainty 
and help our economy grow. The majority leader is on point when he 
shared the numbers. I think we have seen about 5 million jobs created 
after approaching literally the great recession when President Obama 
first took office. So let's get that job done.

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