[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 64 (Thursday, April 6, 1995)]
[House]
[Pages H4399-H4400]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


        THE CONTRACT WITH AMERICA WILL BENEFIT THE MIDDLE CLASS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Radanovich). Under a previous order of 
the House, the gentleman from Georgia [Mr. Kingston] is recognized for 
5 minutes.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, I wanted to comment, just a few comments 
on my friend who spoke previously in front of me.
  I think that it is important that as we debate and talk about the 
situation in America today that we try and leave class envy and 
prejudice out of it. I know it just sounds so appealing to say 
everybody's billionaires and millionaires. I guess because you are 
successful you become guilty of overachievement; therefore, you should 
be overtaxed equally.
  Maybe that is the Democrat mantra; but, as I was pointing out 
earlier, the distribution of the $500 per child tax credit--and you 
know what, Mr. Speaker, I am going to go ahead and move down to the 
easel because I was not intending to show this, but let us go ahead and 
make sure. All right.
  You know, I know the Democrats do not like our charts, and there is 
reason they do not like our charts. They do not like the truth. When 
you are pushing propaganda, you do not like to have people stand up and 
say, well, here is a source that is a neutral source that comes from 
the Tax Foundation. It is not the Republican party. It is not Newt 
Gingrich's office. But that 87.5 percent of the people who benefit from 
this middle-class tax cut are people under $75,000 in income. That is 
pretty much middle class. You know, it is a very mainstream tax credit.
  Now, here is on the capital gains tax. Most of the people who will be 
benefiting, this larger column, make under $50,000 a year. I hope that 
when we reconvene in May that we can get away from this class envy and 
this if you do well we are going to attack you because you have done 
something wrong along the way. I like to believe that people who are 
successful have done so usually by helping others, by selling a quality 
good or delivering a service that is needed in America today.
  Now, let us talk about the Contract With America, which I know the 
press and a lot of folks on the other side of the aisle do not like. 
But the Contract With America, if you go back to when it was introduced 
in October, everyone said, well, this is cute, but it
 will never get passed, nobody is really interested in it, and the 
Republicans are the minority party and will not make a difference.

  Well, that was in October. November, what happened? It was passed. 
And then for the first time in history the media started calling it 
Contract With America instead of Contract for America. That was a big 
step within the national liberal media.
  Then, by December, what had happened? Instead of people saying, hey, 
the November elections are over with, ho hum, let's go home, they said 
this is really different, we are going to have some changes, we are 
going to have some fundamental changes in Washington, DC. These folks 
have a campaign promise that they are telling people put on your 
refrigerator door, call us, follow up, make sure that we follow through 
on our promise to you that we made on the campaign trail.
  And now all the new freshmen, all the sophomore class, all the senior 
Republicans delivered. But, more importantly, Mr. Speaker, 70 percent 
of the items on the Contract With America passed with bipartisan 
support.
  Democrats joined in. Why? Not because they are in love with Newt 
Gingrich but because their constituents wanted these items. This is 
what 60 to 70 to 80 percent of Americans want: smaller government, 
fewer regulations, more personal freedom, get the government off my 
back, lower my taxes. And that is what the Contract With America is all 
about.
  [[Page H4400]] When we reconvene, Mr. Speaker, we are going to tackle 
the budget. Now, the third largest item on the budget, the third 
largest expenditure, is interest on the national debt, interest paid to 
bondholders of our debt. In 2 years that interest alone will be more 
than our military or defense spending, which means you are paying more 
interest in the year 1997 on the national debt than you will for the 
Army, the Navy, the Marine Corps, the National Guard, the Air Force, 
and all of them combined.
  We have got to do something about it, and it is a bipartisan problem. 
We got here by bipartisan action, and we have got to get out of it that 
way. When we pay so much interest on the national debt, your taxes go 
up, you have less money to put into education or health care, the 
interest rates go up.
  Alan Greenspan, Chairman of the Federal Reserve, says it makes as 
much as a 2 percent increase in the interest rate on your home 
mortgage, on your automobile mortgage, and it is inflationary.
  We have got to address this problem. It is not going to be easy, but 
it has got to be done across the board, it has got to be done in a fair 
manner, and I hope, Mr. Speaker, we can do it in a bipartisan manner.
  Just to give you an idea, farm programs in the year 1986 had a 
spending level of $26 billion. Today, they are $10.6 billion. And yet 
agriculture is better than ever. We have a lot of food today, Mr. 
Speaker. If we can do that with agriculture, we can do it with the rest 
of our Nation's budget. I look forward to being a part of that process.


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