[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 47 (Monday, April 15, 1996)]
[House]
[Page H3242]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




           DETERMINING TAXES A RESPONSIBILITY FOR POLITICIANS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentlewoman from Colorado [Mrs. Schroeder] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mrs. SCHROEDER. Mr. Speaker, welcome to Pander Theater. First of all, 
I want to say to people that the next hour is going to be a very 
thoughtful presentation that I hope every American citizen listens to. 
The gentleman from Colorado [Mr. Skaggs] and the gentleman from 
Virginia [Mr. Moran] are two of the most thoughtful Members here. 
Please, I hope you listen to it.
  Look, I am leaving at the end of this term, so I can speak a lot more 
freely. What you are going to hear today is going to be absolutely 
incredible.
  Let me just give you the rule of politics that everybody ought to 
understand. Whether you vote for more B-2 bombers or more Head Start, 
whether you vote for more agricultural subsidies or more environmental 
cleanup, whether you vote for more prisons or more student loans, 
whether you vote for more highways or more education funds, more, more, 
more, and all of those you know who you make happy. You know the groups 
you make happy when you tell them you did this, and that is how you get 
reelected.
  Whenever you vote for more taxes, you make everybody mad; everybody 
mad. So if you like what Juan and Evita Peron did to Argentina, you are 
going to love what happens if we get this through today. We are taking 
the Argentine model, which is give something to everyone, let us vote 
for all of you to have presents, and it will take a two-thirds vote to 
ever get enough people to vote for to pay for it.
  What this is about is get your credit card back out, the Congress is 
ready to go back into Reaganomics II. If we do not learn from history, 
we are condemned to repeat it.
  You remember the Reagan program of 1980. They said we are going to 
increase defense, cut taxes, and balance the budget. We did two out of 
three. We increased defense, we cut taxes, and the budget went right 
through the ceiling. The deficit went right up.
  Now, we on this side of the aisle have taken some very hard hits. 
Without one vote from that side of the aisle we bellied up to the bar 
and started paying some of this off. We have cut the deficit in half. I 
wish it were down to zero. I would do more. We have cut it in half. How 
did we do that? We had to have a little increase in the gasoline tax. I 
am sure all of you felt that. None of us liked that, a few cents in the 
gasoline tax.
  But we got the deficit paid down by half, because we realized we had 
a huge party in the eighties. Everybody had a great time. And we left 
our children to be the poorer-scoopers behind the horses after the 
parade down the street.

                              {time}  1430

  That was not fair. So today, because it is tax day, we are going to 
have like a Hallmark card legislation day. This is tax day, so we are 
all going to vote on a very tough issue. Yes, sir, we are going to come 
down here and say it takes a two-thirds vote to raise taxes. Of course, 
it only takes 50 plus 1 to do spending.
  So the game I have seen around here since I have been a Member of 
Congress is people vote for all the spending programs and then they 
vote against the taxes, and you are guaranteed to have asbestos 
underwear that will get you through every election from here on because 
you made everybody happy and you voted for the spending that each of 
these groups wanted. They are the only ones that track it, so you made 
all of the individual groups happy, and then you made all of the 
citizens happy because you vote against all the spending. The only 
people who are not happy are the people who are going to inherent the 
debt. Yes, blessed are the young for they shall inherit the national 
debt.
  We are saying that because we are so prone to run down here and vote 
for taxes any time we get a chance, this body just cannot wait to vote 
for more taxes, that what we have to do today on tax day is lift the 
ceiling to two-thirds to be able to do it. Ladies and gentlemen, if you 
believe that this body wants to have a tax will every week, that we 
cannot wait to vote for it every week, that we are so politically 
stupid we honestly think that you cannot find out when we vote for tax 
increases and we are going to love voting for more and more and that we 
have to put this constitutional restraint upon ourselves, I do not know 
where you have been. That is absolutely not true. Not one of these 
votes is popular.
  To add those few little cents to the gasoline tax to start bringing 
this debt down, it took arm twisting on this side like mad. We did not 
have one extra vote of what we needed, and it took the Vice President 
of the United States to get it through the other body. Now, that is how 
tough it is. But if you want a culture where we spend, spend, spend and 
then we put it on a credit card, if we want to go back to seeing the 
debt go back up before we got it all the way down, you are in great 
shape. That is why I pointed out when this body cannot even get 51 
percent to agree to a budget for this year, they have a lot of nerve 
bringing this up, and I really hope we get some sense in this debate.

  I thank the two gentlemen who will be leading this.

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