Thank you to these witnesses. Certainly it's much more pleasant listening to you on this side of the table than on the other side of the table.
I want to go with the projections of surplus for the next couple of years, even though it looks as if a lot of commitments made in the 2006 budget go forward four or five years, which probably to you folks means a lot more than it does to the average folks.
Ms. Russell's projection is that it's going to be in the range of $4 billion. Mr. Drummond's is $1.8 billion to $2.8 billion, and I assume Mr. Orr is somewhere in there, but certainly not disagreeing greatly with that. I want to go through what's left.
If he goes with personal income tax changes--in other words, he takes the November 2005 update, photocopies it, and puts pretty blue paper on it--what is that going to cost him, and where will that leave him? He's bumping up the first basic personal exemption and presumably bringing the marginal rate back down to where it was at 15%. What is that going to cost?
That is for Mr. Drummond, or any of the three.