mr. speaker , over the last few days we have seen a flurry of tax cuts on the house floor : three yesterday , another one , a big one , today . 
and over the last 6 months , four other bills have been enacted that have tax cuts and concessions built into them , for example , the energy policy act . 
by breaking all of those tax cuts into small pieces and by burying them in other bills , not tax bills , the audit trail very quickly becomes hard to follow . 
it is hard to see the forest for the trees . 
hard to see in the aggregate how all of these different tax cuts add up . 
so let us look at the revenue scorecard over the last 6 months , bearing in mind that every delay of revenues cut is a dollar added to the deficit . 
first of all , the highway bill : $ 500 million . 
the energy policy act : $ 6.9 billion over 5 years . 
the katrina emergency tax relief act : $ 6.1 billion over 5 years . 
the stealth tax relief act , the 1-year extension , or patch , to the amt adopted yesterday : $ 31.2 billion . 
today 's bill : $ 56.1 billion . 
the bill we adopted yesterday , a miscellany of small tax cuts , but it adds up to $ 153 million . 
and finally the gulf opportunity zone tax act which was passed yesterday : $ 7.1 billion . 
the total amount of all of these tax cuts comes to $ 108 billion . 
so if you pass this bill today , the total impact that you will have taken with today 's vote and recent votes comes to 108 . 
but wait , it is not over yet . 
because there is a provision in this bill , a provision in our substitute , a provision in yesterday 's bill that indicates something has got to be done about the alternative minimum tax . 
we are going to have to fix the alternative minimum tax . 
if you fix it for 5 years , not 1 , the aggregate effect of this fix , of all of the other tax cuts along with it , comes to $ 301 billion over 5 years . 
that is the sum total that these tax cuts will add to the deficit , $ 301 billion if you fix the amt next year and the following years the same way we are fixing it this year . 
so the net effect on the deficit is $ 301 billion in all political reality . 
so every member here who is in earnest about the deficit should be on notice . 
you have a choice : you can vote for the underlying bill and add $ 301 billion to the deficit over the next 5 years , or you can vote for this bill and provide middle-income tax relief and not add a dime to the deficit . 
here , in effect , is what your choice is . 
we stand at a crossroads today that cbo has depicted as follows on this particular chart . 
you can take this path here with $ 319 billion , or you can take this path here , and by 2015 , we can be nearly out of deficit . 
on the other hand , you can take the path that this bill would take , and you will be $ 640 billion in deficit in 10 years . 
the democratic substitute is morally and fiscally far and away the better choice , particularly if you want to balance the budget and eradicate the deficit . 
