We did the two-year extension of Bush tax cuts in 2010. We negotiated the Budget Control Act in August of 2011 and the fiscal cliff deal at the end of 2012, which saved 99 percent of Americans from a tax increase.

When Republicans used reconciliation in 2001 for the Bush tax cuts, they used it to increase the deficit. The whole purpose of reconciliation is for deficit reduction!

A lot of Americans think they got a tax cut, and they didn't because their local property tax went up, their excise tax went up, their sales tax went up, and their prices went up and everything else, because we failed to invest in some of these other things we ought to be doing. ... We are squeezing the middle class, we are losing the middle class, and the gap between the haves and the have-nots is growing wider and wider, not closing as it used to be.

I have never voted for a tax increase.

I think the Bush tax cuts should be made permanent.

The Bush tax cuts, they ought to be made permanent in my mind so there is certainty out there.