Some comments from the House debate on HB 563, the tax cut bill:

Rep. Dick Harwood, R-St. Maries, said, "When we take tax dollars from people and we take more than we can actually use, we're saying we can use it more than you do." He spoke disparagingly of rainy-day accounts for state government. "I'm not sure we're doing much for cutting government," Harwood said. "I think some of the money that we're taking in too much needs to go back to the people."

Rep. Brian Cronin, D-Boise, said, "School levies are being run all over this state, district after district, year after year, to compensate for the deficit in K-12 appropriations that we've failed to deliver. ... It's a shell game."

House Tax Chairman Dennis Lake, R-Blackfoot, said, "We are creating a structural deficit in our revenue stream that we cannot deal with, without, at some time in the future raising taxes." Lake said, "The revenue growth that we would have to have to sustain what we're doing is 7.8 percent." He said no economist the Legislature has heard from is predicting growth that high; lawmakers adopted a revenue forecast showing just 4.5 percent growth next year.