I think we've tried to address that issue in the last two budgets, in the sense that 850,000 people in this country no longer pay federal income tax. I do understand your point when you speak to the fact that when the 10% or 20% of incomes at the higher end go up, percentage-wise, they obviously go up a lot more than the lower end.
One of the things you have to address from a government perspective, as far as we're concerned, is to make sure that folks who are at the lower end of the income scale receive credits that apply to them to allow them to do the types of things they need to do on a daily and yearly basis to support their families, and if they're paying tax and shouldn't be, to make sure we remove them from the tax rolls. When you move 855,000 people from the tax rolls, I think that states a lot.
When you talk about the debt that we pay down, in a sense a lot of the interest that we use and a lot of the debt we pay down is money that we don't have to pay interest on. I think what we've done is responsible in terms of ensuring that we apply the money that we have and the revenue that's generated to the most vulnerable, and by that I mean those who shouldn't be paying income tax and those in low-income families that need assistance.
You didn't address this in your comments. I do want to ask a couple of folks some other questions, but I do think that needs to be taken into account when you prepare your presentations.