[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 175 (Tuesday, November 7, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S16716-S16717]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




            PRESIDENT CLINTON AND THE FORGOTTEN MIDDLE CLASS

  Mr. GRAMS. Mr. President, if you had been in New Hampshire on 
Thursday, January 9, 1992, and had been near a television, you might 
have seen the premiere of a new political advertisement--the first, 
early ad of the presidential campaign for a candidate who was not yet a 
familiar face.
  The setting is an office. Piano music plays gently in the background, 
and the candidate speaks to the camera with an American flag as his 
backdrop.
  ``In the 80's,'' he begins, ``the rich got richer, the middle class 
declined, poverty exploded, politicians in Washington raised their pay 
and pointed fingers, but no one took responsibility.''
  The candidate promises a tax cut for the middle class, even offers 
viewers a copy of his ``Plan for America's Future'' if they call the 
number on their television screen.
  ``I hope you'll join us in this crusade for change,'' he says 
earnestly.

       Together we can put government back on the side of the 
     forgotten middle class and restore the American dream.
       I'm Bill Clinton, and I believe you deserve more than 30-
     second ads or vague promises.

  Mr. President, Bill Clinton evoked the image of the forgotten middle 
class throughout his campaign for the White House, tantalizing the 
voters--while separating himself from the rest of his Democratic 
opponents--by promising he would cut taxes for working-class Americans.
  ``I am not in this thing to pander,'' he told Business Week in a June 
1992 interview.

       The way I came to the across-the-board, middle-class tax 
     cut didn't have a relationship to the polls. . . . I came 
     back to the middle-class tax cut as a down payment on 
     fairness.

  As that ``down payment on fairness'' took shape, Bill Clinton reached 
out to the overtaxed middle class by focusing his tax cut plan on 
families, advocating ideas that seemed more in line with the Republican 
vision than the Democrat policies of the past. ``It is very much harder 
to raise a child for a middle-class family today than it was 40 years 
ago,'' said candidate Clinton. ``Our country used to take the position 
that the way to build strong families was to enable the working people 
to have enough money to raise their families.''
  ``We're still getting a disproportionate amount of taxes from the 
middle class,'' he emphasized.
  During the Presidential campaign, candidate Clinton promised to 
reduce the taxes paid by families and shield them from future tax 
increases.
  ``Virtually every industrialized nation recognizes the importance of 
strong families in its tax code; we should too,'' he wrote in ``Putting 
People First,'' his campaign's economic outline for the country.
  ``We will lower the tax burden on middle-class Americans.''
  Mr. Clinton's plan began to take shape with a focus on tax relief for 
families with children. ``The main portion of the middle-class tax cut 
for me in its present form is the children's tax credit,'' he said back 
in 1992.
  He promised that he would cut taxes for average, middle-class 
families by 10 percent, giving them a choice between a phased-in, $800 
per-child tax credit or a ``significant reduction in their income tax 
rate.''
  Those election-year promises helped turn candidate Bill Clinton into 
President Bill Clinton when frustrated Americans went to the polls that 
November.
  But like so many promises made in the political heat of an election 
year, Mr. Clinton's tax-cut intentions of 1992 melted like summer snow 
in 1993.
  By then, Republicans in Congress were rallying around the $500 per-
child tax credit I had authored as a Member of the House, making it the 
centerpiece of our budget alternatives in both the House and Senate.
  But the Democrats, led by the President, pushed through a package of 
tax hikes on the middle class--a historic tax increase that affected 
every segment of American society.
  Promises made, promises broken.
  Mr. President, in 1995, this Congress has not forgotten our promise 
to the middle class.
  We have passed a budget that recognizes, just as President Clinton 
did in 1992, that working-class Americans have paid more than their 
fair share of taxes over the last 40 years.
  Families in 1950 sent just $1 of every $50 they earned to Washington, 
but families today are turning over $1 out of every $4.
  That is money they could have spent for a child's education, health 
insurance, groceries for an elderly parent, or something as simple as 
birthday presents and Christmas gifts.
  But instead, they are handing it over to the Washington bureaucrats, 
who spend it for them--often recklessly--in ways that often have no 
benefit at all to the folks who foot the Government's bills.
  For more than 40 years, the only economic and fiscal discipline 
exercised by Congress has come at the expense of the American 
taxpayers.
  The budget plan we will soon be sending to the President is based on 
our deeply held belief that the weekly paycheck is not the Government's 
money--that families can spend their own money better than a Government 
that demands those dollars to spend on their behalf.
  We are certain that 250 million Americans, empowered to make their 
own spending decisions, will make better choices than Congress and the 
President could ever make for them.
  With our budget, Congress is dedicating $245 billion to tax relief, 
the vast majority of which will go to working-class American families 
through the $500-per-child tax credit.
  The child tax credit means Minnesota families would get to keep $477 
million of their own dollars every year, to spend wherever they needed 
help the most.
  The $500-per-child tax credit would return $150 million annually to 
families in President Clinton's own State of Arkansas. And it would 
completely erase the tax liability for 38,411 Arkansas residents.
  Well, it has been nearly 4 years since that first campaign commercial 
in New Hampshire promised tax relief for the beleaguered middle class. 
An election is on the horizon, and once again, like the swallows 
returning to Capistrano, candidate Clinton is talking about cutting 
taxes.
  He laid out the framework in his most recent State of the Union 
address. He said: ``I have proposed the middle-class bill of rights * * 
* It will give needed tax relief and raise incomes in both the short 
run and the long run, in a way that benefits all of us.''
  We say ``welcome back aboard'' to the President. We need President 
Clinton with us as the budget process continues. He has a critical role 
as we move forward.
  We cannot enact our groundbreaking legislation without his signature. 
We cannot carry out the people's agenda without the people's President 
behind us.
  And President Clinton needs us, too. So we have prepared a budget 
that meets the objectives outlined at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue. 
Yes, Congress and the President may disagree about some of the 
specifics, but not our goals.
  The budget must balance. It must protect and preserve Medicare. It 
must restore hope to those who have been trapped in the welfare system. 
And it must cut taxes for the middle-class, with the same child tax 
credit President Clinton promised in 1992, and again this year.
  President Clinton considered family tax relief such a fundamental 
concept that he outlined it as a priority in that very first television 
ad of his Presidential campaign. ``Together we can put government back 
on the side of the 

[[Page S 16717]]
forgotten middle class and restore the American dream,'' he told New 
Hampshire television viewers.
  The time for vague promises is long past. If he still believes in the 
words he delivered with such conviction in 1992--and in the child tax 
credit that will turn those words into action--then the President must 
sign the budget bill we send him in 1995.
  Thank you, Mr. President.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. FORD addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Chair recognizes the Senator from 
Kentucky.
  Mr. FORD. Mr. President, I want to take just 1 minute.

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