[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 61 (Monday, April 3, 1995)]
[House]
[Pages H4074-H4075]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


THE CROWN JEWELS OF THE REPUBLICAN CONTRACT WITH AMERICA GO TO WEALTHY 
              CORPORATIONS, NOT TO MIDDLE-INCOME AMERICANS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Oregon [Mr. DeFazio] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, the Speaker said it all over the weekend. 
He talked about the crown jewel, or the crowning achievement of the 
Republican Contract on America; that is, the coming tax cuts.
  I would say it is a crowning achievement for certain, because we are 
talking about $188 billion over 5 years. That is even more than these 
precious jewels on this crown here could represent: $630 billion over 
10 years. This is quite an achievement.
  We have been cutting and hacking our way through domestic programs 
the school lunch program, the Women, Infants, and Children Program, and 
a whole host of other things that are important to middle-income 
Americans. We are putting that in the pot. That is going to help begin 
to pay for the crowning achievement, for the crown jewels.
  We could say, in fact, that figuratively the Speaker and his party 
have been taking dollars and cents out of the pockets of middle-income 
and less-well-off Americans, thrown them all together in one big pot, 
in order to buy a crown for those who are already at the top.
  Mr. Speaker, one of the most startling proposals, and this wasn't in 
the contract to come forward, but it has been added after some 
corporate arm-twisting and lobbying, big business got a very, very 
special break here. Everyone's eyes start to glaze over a bit when you 
talk taxes, so I guess no one thought much when suddenly the Republican 
contract had a little addition; that is, a repeal of the alternative 
corporate minimum tax.
  [[Page H4075]] What does that mean? Let us go back to 1982, before we 
had a corporate alternative minimum tax. Here is what it meant back 
then.
  From 1982 to 1985, AT&T--American Telephone and Telegraph--had 
profits of $24,898,000,000, and guess how much they paid in taxes: 
nothing. In fact, after $24,898,000,000 in profits over that 4-year 
period, they were entitled to a $635.5 million tax credit. That is, 
working Americans people who go to work every day, and every day the 
Government takes
 something out of their paycheck, a little bit of that went to give 
AT&T a tax credit for taxes that it did not pay.

  Who else? What else did this mean back in 1982? The Boeing Company 
was doing a little better back then. They were selling more airplanes. 
They had profits of $2,271,000. How much did they pay in taxes? Not one 
red cent. In fact, they got a refundable tax credit of $121 million. 
The list goes on; Texaco, $1.5 billion, a $68 million credit.
  Finally, Mr. Speaker, the loser at the bottom of this list of 50, 
Middle South utilities, with a puny $2.5 billion in profits, paid 
nothing, but they were not eligible for a credit. They did not get the 
crown. However, maybe under this new proposal they will.
  It is ironic that the Republican tax proposal would not give a 
refundable tax credit for children. That is right, for people who are 
already at the bottom of the rung, people earning around $20,000 to 
$25,000 a year, they cannot get a refundable tax credit for their 
children, but our corporations now will be able to get refundable tax 
credits.
  Doesn't that make you feel a lot better? Doesn't that give you a 
little bit better idea what this is all about?
  The estimates are that these credits would flow to the largest 
corporations in this country; 90 percent of the alternative minimum tax 
that was paid in 1990 was paid by firms with assets of more than $250 
million. Three-quarters--75 percent--of those firms had assets of more 
than $2 billion, so it is those poor struggling firms with only $2 
billion in assets to whom we are going to extend a refundable tax 
credit through this legislation this week.
  Working Americans, the day after the crowning achievement of the 
gentleman from Georgia [Mr. Gingrich], the Contract With America, 
passes, will go to work and the Government will still take a nice piece 
of change out of their paycheck. That will not change a bit, 
particularly if you only earned $20,000 or $25,000 a year. However, the 
corporation you work for might just get a nice big, fat tax break, 
particularly if they are worth more than $2 billion. Think about it.

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