[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 53 (Tuesday, April 23, 1996)]
[House]
[Pages H3704-H3705]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1845
WE MUST BALANCE THE BUDGET IN THE FAIREST POSSIBLE WAY FOR EVERY FAMILY 
                               IN AMERICA

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Markey] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Speaker, we have reached the critical juncture in 
this Congress, debating whether or not in fact we will deal with the 
critical issues that face our country, the issues that the families of 
this country want to see addressed, and whether we will do so in a 
reasonable and responsible fashion.
  The Republican Party has argued that we should balance the Federal 
budget by the year 2002. The Democratic Party has responded that they, 
as well, want to balance the Federal budget by the year 2002. We will 
agree upon that. We are going to do that as a Congress and as a nation. 
The issue becomes how do we do it, how can it be done in the fairest 
possible fashion to every family in our country. How can the sacrifice 
be distributed that ensures that every family is treated fairly? That 
is the great debate going on in this Congress.
  The Republican Party says that as part of balancing the budget, they 
must fulfill their commitment to ensure that their crown jewel in the 
Contract With America is given over to the

[[Page H3705]]

wealthy, those who are in the upper-income brackets. They must receive 
huge tax breaks.
  Ordinary families say, well, that does not sound too fair. If you 
look back over the last 20 years, we have not had any increase in the 
wages, those of us in the bottom 60 percentile or 70 percentile of 
wages in this country, people making $20,000 and $30,000 and $40,000 a 
year.
  So if there are going to be tax breaks given out, the tax breaks 
should not be given out to the wealthy. We should get the tax breaks, 
so we can educate our children in high school and grammar school and in 
college. That is where the tax breaks should go, not to the wealthy.
  And if you are going to cut programs, you cannot cut Medicare part B 
and make Grandma pay an extra $400 a year when she only makes $13,000 a 
year on average; all of the elderly, senior, retired women, when at the 
same time you are not going to touch the timber subsidies and the 
mining subsidies and the grazing subsidies, et cetera, et cetera, that 
the big business interests get. It has got to be fair.
  Grandma or Grandpa, they do not mind sacrificing. God knows, they do 
not mind sacrificing. They took us through the Depression, they took us 
through World War II, and they built us into the greatest country in 
the world in the 1950's and the 1960's, so they do not mind 
sacrificing. They have sacrificed their whole lives. What they want is 
fairness. The tax breaks cannot go to the wealthy. The tax breaks have 
to go to people who can educate their kids. The programs that get cut 
cannot be for the elderly: Medicare, Medicaid. The programs have to be 
grazing subsidies and timber subsidies and Star Wars and all the rest 
of these crazy programs that should not be given Federal subsidies 
anymore. That is the only fair way of doing it.
  The Republicans say, do not worry about it, because if you balance 
the budget by the year 2000, interest rates are going down 2 points and 
the oil, the water of prosperity, will flow evenly across all of those 
in this great country, and we will not have to do anything else for 
ordinary working people. The reality is that it has not flowed that way 
for the last 15 years, since Reaganomics began.
  We have seen this distortion in terms of who are the beneficiaries of 
the wealth in our country. The rich are getting richer and the rest are 
just paying taxes. That is how this system has wound up in this 
country. Ordinary people are the ones who are afraid that their jobs 
are not going to produce the income they need for their families.

  The fallacy in the Republican argument that interest rates are 
automatically going down two points--and by the way, the Democrats 
would wish that that would be the case, too, because we support a 
balanced budget, just as much as the Republicans do now--is that there 
is a doctrine. It is called NAIRU. It is called the non-accelerating 
inflationary rate of unemployment, the non-accelerating inflationary 
rate of unemployment. That means that the rate of unemployment, once it 
goes below a certain point, and, for these purposes below about 5.5 
percent, about 6 to 8 million Americans unemployed.
  Mr. Speaker, I will return at a later date to continue my discourse 
on this subject.

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