[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 62 (Tuesday, April 4, 1995)]
[House]
[Pages H4144-H4145]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


                              {time}  1645
                                TAX CUTS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Bilbray). Under a previous order of the 
House, the gentleman from California [Mr. Becerra] is recognized for 5 
minutes.
  Mr. BECERRA. Mr. Speaker, there is nothing wrong with tax cuts. 
Obviously, it is great if we can give the American people a tax cut.
  Two questions we have to ask, though, are: Is it being done equitably 
and can we afford to pay for the tax cuts, because somewhere we will 
have to pay for the loss in revenue.
  We have heard Speaker Newt Gingrich describe within the contract on 
America this tax-cut proposal as the crown jewel of the contract. It is 
a crown jewel all right, but the only problem is you only get the 
jewels if you are privileged enough in society and can afford them.
  The plan gives away billions of dollars in tax breaks and other 
goodies to corporations and the well-to-do, those groups, the only 
groups, in fact, that in the 1980's benefited from the trickle-down 
economics we experienced in that decade. If you do not belong to this 
group of corporations or well-to-do, the plan not only does not help 
but you have to pay for it as well.
  How will you pay? We have seen a little already. Who takes the hit? 
School lunch programs, student loan programs, student grant programs 
for colleges, summer youth employment programs, home heating assistance 
for seniors. There will be more middle-class programs cut and 
dismantled over the next several months to pay for these expensive tax 
cuts.
  The capital gains tax cut that we will see by itself benefits, for 
the most part, those that have incomes in the six-fugure range. 
Seventy-five percent of the benefits will go to the top 12 percent of 
Americans in this country. Overall, 50 percent of the benefits go to 
those who earn over $100,000, 12 percent of the entire population.
  Let us take a quick look at a chart that we prepared here to show who 
benefits but who pays. If you happen to earn $200,000 or more, you are 
going to get about $11,266 from a tax cut from the Republican proposed 
legislation. If you earn under $30,000, you can expect to get, over the 
year, $124 in that tax cut.
  If you take a look here, you can see how many people in America earn 
those different ranges of income. How many people earn over $200,000 a 
year? Less than 1 percent of the population. Yet they are going to take 
the lion's share of those tax cuts. How many earn under $30,000 or 
between $30,000 and $75,000? About 45 percent of the American public.
  You can see from this chart how much, close to 50 percent of the 
American public will get out of these tax cuts. They are not going to 
the average middle-class family. They are not going to the average 
family period. They are going mostly to those who are well-to-do.
  Why? It is unclear. We have not specified where the cuts will come 
from, the money to pay for those cuts. We have not discussed how we 
will somehow make up for the loss in money to pay for school lunch 
programs, but we do know that those who earn over $200,000 will benefit 
tremendously from this.
  Is it just a Democrat or someone who happens to represent an area 
that has a lot of middle-class or working-class 
[[Page H4145]] people in it that is subjected to this tax-cut bill, 
Democrat or Republican tax-cut bills? No.
  Let me give some quotes from people on the Republican side of the 
aisle on this tax-cut proposal.
  ``Most people in my district don't consider someone making over 
$200,000 middle class.'' Republican from Iowa.
  ``It's a message that we need to give. That we don't think $200,000 
is middle class. Just because everyone signed the Contract With America 
does not mean that everyone agreed with every detail.'' Republican from 
Nevada said that.
  ``I want something that defends Democrats' charges that we are the 
party of the rich.'' Republican from Illinois.
  ``There's a lot of concern that if we were to enact all the tax cuts 
in the Contract With America that it would make it all but impossible 
to bring the deficit under control.'' The chairman of the Committee on 
Rules, Republican from New York, said that.
  Clearly, what we see here is not a tax-cut plan that will go to 
middle America. It is a tax-cut plan that removes the minimum 
protection that we have to make sure that corporations pay any minimum 
taxes that we passed about 10 years ago because we saw some mega-
corporations, transnational corporations getting away without paying a 
cent of tax.
  The Republican proposal that we will have before us this week 
eliminates that law that requires corporations to pay at least a 
minimum tax. This is not a tax plan for average Americans. This is not 
a tax plan that the Congress should pass. This is not a tax plan that 
the President should sign. This is a tax plan that will go to a few and 
be paid by many.
  Mr. Speaker, I would urge all my colleagues as we debate this measure 
to take a close look at what we do here today and tell the American 
people that, before we start talking about tax cuts, let us start 
talking about deficit reduction.


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