[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 62 (Tuesday, April 4, 1995)]
[House]
[Pages H4156-H4157]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         EFFECTS OF THE TAX CUT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Colorado [Mr. Skaggs] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. SKAGGS. Mr. Speaker, we are now into the home stretch, I think to 
the relief of Members on both sides of the aisle, the home stretch of 
the 100 days. And as has been announced by the Speaker, we are able 
this week to appreciate in all of its glory the crown jewel of the 
contract, the tax bill that the Members of the Republican Party are 
going to bring to the floor later this week.
  I think it is important for the country to understand in this week in 
which we are finally able to pull all of this together to understand 
who are the winners and who are the losers in this entire contract 
exercise.
  Particularly with regard to the tax bill, we should be under 
absolutely no illusions that this bill certainly fulfills the promises 
that have been made over the months and years by the GOP to its 
supporters. That distribution is accurately reflected in the chart here 
to my right.
  About half of the benefit from this tax
   legislation will go to the top 10 percent in this country, about a 
five-to-one return. The Wealthiest 5 percent get about a 7-to-1 return, 
getting about over a third of the benefits of this tax legislation. The 
wealthiest 1 percent, a 20-to-1 return.

  I am sure that this nice return on investment was made possible in 
part, as we are learning more and more about the very intimate 
relationship between many special interest lobbyists in Washington and 
the drafting of legislation being brought to the floor by the new 
majority party, despite their protests about a new way of doing 
business, makes it all the more understandable why we had such a hard 
time at the beginning of the session getting them to take seriously the 
efforts that many Members on our side were trying to make to take up 
gift and lobbying reform.
  I wish we would not be having these kinds of pie charts and 
demonstrations of exactly who gets the benefits from these tax breaks, 
if some of the very well-intended moderate Members on the majority side 
of the aisle had been more successful in getting their leadership to 
pay attention to the inequities in this bill.
  Mr. SAWYER. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. SKAGGS. I yield to the gentleman from Ohio.
  Mr. SAWYER. Mr. Speaker, I rise because in fact as we are doing this, 
we are taking, in order to finance these kinds of tax breaks, at least 
$13 billion from the pockets of Americans who are trying to send their 
kids to school, to higher education. I would not raise this except for 
the fact that we have been here before.
  This Nation a century ago made a fundamental decision, when we looked 
around the country and we saw 200 institutions of higher education 
largely for the sons of the very wealthy in this country and we saw the 
railroads expanding westward, we said that in order to build a nation 
as fast as we are expanding, we need to elevate our skills. And so we 
took from some of those expanding railroads and we invested those 
dollars in the largest single expansion of higher education this Nation 
has ever seen.
  It did not quit even until today. And with it we have created the 
skills that have defined the American century.
  Today we run the risk of reversing that decision, of giving back 
those dollars to those corporations in ways that they may not need and 
absolutely depriving Americans from the chance to continue, at a time 
when it has never been more important, the increasingly important 
effort to raise job opportunities and standard of living with the 
ability to bring skills to the American workplace. We have been here 
before, Mr. Speaker.
  Mr. HOKE. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. SKAGGS. I yield to the gentleman from Ohio.
  Mr. HOKE. Here is my question for you----
  Mr. SAWYER. I was in the middle of a sentence, but that is all right.
  Mr. HOKE. Mr. Speaker, I apologize to the gentleman.
  Mr. SAWYER. The fact of the matter is that today, the fundamental 
underpinnings of Federal aid to higher 
[[Page H4157]] education in the form of Stafford Interest-Deferred 
Loans, Perkins Student Loans, College Work-Study programs and 
Supplemental Education Opportunity Grants are really the equivalent 
today of what those land grant colleges were 100 years ago. In order to 
sustain that growth into the next century that we developed in this 
century, in order to have the kind of productive leadership that has 
defined the American era, in order to extend that American era into the 
leadership of a redefined world, it seems to me that the last thing we 
need to do is to take those $13 billion out of Americans' pockets and 
to give them back in the form of tax breaks that we do not need.


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