Federal Aviation Administration Extension Act of 2010

Floor Speech

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Mr. FEINGOLD. Mr. President, while this proposal contains a number of provisions I support, including an extension of desperately needed unemployment benefits as well as a 2-year extension of the middle-class tax cuts, it fails in at least one critical respect. Rather than include a combination of responsible spending cuts and revenue increases to offset its projected cost of nearly $900 billion, the proposal instead just adds its cost to our already massive national debt. This measure adds more to our national debt than either the stimulus bill, which I supported, or the Wall Street bailout, which I opposed. There may be good arguments to postpone fully paying for these tax cuts or, alternatively, for offsetting their cost over a number of years to avoid undermining the fragile economic recovery. But, like the Baucus and Schumer proposals I opposed earlier this month, the measure before us fails to make even the most modest effort to pay for these tax cuts. Instead, it heaps $900 billion onto an already mountainous level of debt that we are asking our children and grandchildren to bear. And much of this money will go toward unjustified tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans.

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