WILMINGTON, DE The tax cut that passed the Senate today may lead our nation back to deficit spending and increase our national debt, Senator Tom Carper said. Carper, who sponsored a smaller broad-based tax-cut, said the tax plan that passed today is "a $2 trillion tax cut masquerading as a $1.35" and cripples the nation's ability to make needed investments in education, defense and health care. "I have a long record of cutting taxes, but this plan crowds out our ability to invest in education, defense and health care," Carper said. "We could have had a trillion-dollar tax cut and made these needed investments. Instead, we may have reversed our progress in paying down our national debt and put our nation back on the road to budget deficits." During the recent budget debate, Carper joined with Republican Senator Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island to secure 43 votes for the Carper-Chafee alternative budget plan that restored much of the increases in education funding that was slashed from the current budget. Carper-Chafee reduced the size of the proposed tax cuts to the $1.2 trillion level that garnered broad bipartisan support in the Senate last April.