i wanted to respond to one thing the gentleman said because he took us back to the clinton administration and the last 2 or 3 years when we had a surplus .  not only did we have a surplus because we had a balanced budget but the economy was booming .  jobs were being created left and right .  i do not care if you were rich or you were poor , things were getting better .  but president bush comes in and he is elected and he says , the answer to the economy is we are going to cut taxes .  and the taxes were cut mostly for wealthy people and corporate interests and special interests that were helping the republicans with their campaign finance .  and that was supposed to be the answer to the economy .  well , i will say , i have this briefing paper from the economic policy institute , which is a bipartisan group .  this is not a democratic organization .  and they are talking about the boom that was not .  the economy has little to show for the $ 860 billion in tax cuts under president bush .  as the gentleman said , we went from a surplus of something like 2 or $ 300 billion .  now just the opposite , a deficit that is two or three times that .  and they come to the conclusion in this report , i just want to read this one section , it says : `` almost every broad measure of economic activity , gross domestic product , jobs , personal income , and business investment among others , has fared worse over the last 4 years than in the past cycles .  proponents of this series of major tax cuts since 2001 have projected that gauges such as these would reflect improvements after enactment. '' in fact , the opposite has occurred .  not only have we created a huge deficit under the bush republican administration , but all the indicators of economic activity have gone down .  so where this republican philosophy has just created a dynamic that has really ruined the economy , it is not completely ruined , we are getting along , but by every economic indicator things were better in the last few years of the clinton administration .  