[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 42 (Tuesday, March 7, 1995)]
[House]
[Pages H2724-H2725]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                    SPENDING CUTS? NOT WITH MY VOTE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 4, 1995, the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Olver] is 
recognized during the morning business for 3 minutes.
  Mr. OLVER. Madam Speaker, in just a couple of weeks we are going to 
be beginning debate on the cornerstone of the Republican Contract on 
America, and that is a tax cut of $200 billion over 5 years. Never mind 
that those tax cuts are going to add to the deficit, never mind that 
these tax cuts make balancing the budget harder. But let us examine 
what these tax cuts actually do.
  In this first chart that I have here, this chart shows who benefits 
from the tax cuts. If you look at this, 50 percent of the tax cuts go 
to 10 percent of the families, with over $100,000 of income per year--
50 percent of the cuts to 10 percent of families.
  At the lower end, the first two categories, which represent 71 
million families or two-thirds of all families in the United States, 
they get less than 20 percent of the tax cuts.
  [[Page H2725]] Well, if that is a little bit difficult to understand, 
then let us look at this chart instead. On this chart, this shows how 
much each family gets. Families with more than $200,000 per year of 
income would get, on average, $5,000 of tax reduction. And 49 million 
families, about 45 percent of all Americans, that have under $30,000 of 
income per year, they would get on average $57 a year, or about $1 per 
week would be their share of this tax cut.
  Now, they claim they are not going to make the deficit larger, so we 
are going to be debating this next week the so-called rescissions bill, 
a $17 billion rescissions bill.
  Well, Madam Speaker, in Newt Gingrich's America, Republican will cut 
infant mortality prevention and prenatal nutrition and children's 
foster care and safe and drug-free schools for children, education for 
disadvantaged children, and domestic violence prevention and shelters 
for homeless families. But they will not do it with my vote.
  Next week, in Newt Gingrich's America's these radical-right 
Republicans will cut vocational and technical education and Americorps, 
the National Community Corps, school drop-out prevention, college 
scholarships and summer jobs. But not with my vote.
  And next week, in Newt Gingrich's America, these Republican 
extremists will cut rental assistance for low-income families and 
public housing maintenance and safety and home heating assistance for 6 
million American families, every one of who happens to lie in this 
lower category. But not with my vote.
  In Newt Gingrich's America, to go back to this we are going to take 
$16 billion of cuts, over $300 for every single family in this 
category, and transfer it to families in this category.


                          ____________________