[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 64 (Thursday, May 9, 1996)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4937-S4939]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

      By Mr. ASHCROFT (for himself, Mr. Lott, Mr. DeWine, Mr. Mack, Mr. 
        Hatch, Mr. Smith, Mr. Craig, and Mr. Shelby):
  S. 1741. A bill to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to allow a 
deduction for the old-age, survivors, and disability insurance taxes 
paid by employees and self-employed individuals, and for other 
purposes; to the Committee on Finance.


               the working americans wage restoration act

  Mr. ASHCROFT. Mr. President, during this year when so much discussion

[[Page S4938]]

is being focused on the future of America, I think it is important for 
us to inventory what it is that has made America a place of opportunity 
and a land which has welcomed individuals with initiative and industry 
from around the world. I think one of the key components of the 
American culture which has allowed that to happen has been the 
component of growth. We have understood that the purpose of government 
is to provide a framework for growth, that growth should be the 
characteristic which identifies America as the land of opportunity. As 
a matter of fact, that citizens and corporations, individuals, and 
institutions should enjoy conditions of growth--that is the reason to 
have government. It is the reason to have public safety, so people can 
grow and develop. It is the reason to have national defense, so the 
Nation can grow. Not that we would have big government, but that we 
would have a largeness in terms of opportunity and citizenship; so that 
we could, indeed, meet the needs of the next generation.

  It has been the kind of thing that has allowed us, as a country, to 
welcome all comers. It is the kind of thing that inspired Emma Lazarus 
to write the poem on the base of the Statue of Liberty:

     Give me your tired, your poor,
     Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
     The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,
     Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me:
       I lift my lamp beside the golden door.

  That is only available--we can only have that kind of optimism about 
the future--if we have growth, if we promote growth; growth not for the 
government but growth for the community, growth for the citizen, growth 
for the individual. That is the purpose of government.
  Yet, during the 1990's we find ourselves with a sense of discomfort, 
a sense of dis-ease, if you will, not disease, but dis-ease. We find 
that workers' wages are stagnant, some of them slipping. And we do not 
have that sense of growth. We do not find ourselves with that large 
reservoir of confidence that is rightfully American. What should we do? 
Where are we? People feel that we are adrift.
  We have a forgotten middle class. It has been detected in the 
Presidential campaigns. It has been understood by people who have been 
out among the voters. You and I have detected it when we have talked to 
folks. They feel like there is a flatness, there is a staleness.
  You feel like there has not been any growth. Then you begin to look 
for a reason. All of a sudden it becomes apparent. The Commerce 
Department of the U.S. Government last week told us about growth. It 
told us about the growth in the amount of taxes that government has 
been taking from individuals. It told us that we have reached an all-
time high in terms of the taxes that individuals are paying. We tax 
people more now in America than we have taxed them at any time in 
history. We tax people more than we taxed them to fight the war in 
Vietnam, to win the Second World War. We tax people more now than we 
taxed them to spend our way out of the Great Depression. We made the 
world safe for democracy in World War I taxing people a lot less than 
we tax people now.
  It is beginning to dawn on America, on citizens, that we have had 
growth in taxes but we have not had growth in wages. People are 
beginning to understand that what you choose to spend by government you 
cannot choose to spend as individuals. The Government has stolen the 
increase in wages from people, the working people of the United States, 
for the last several years. The tax increases of this decade, including 
the 1993 tax increase of President Clinton, the largest tax increase in 
the history of America, has literally siphoned off the pay increase, 
the take-home pay addition that people would have had in the United 
States. It is time for us to understand that high taxes have hurt the 
ability of people to have more take-home pay.
  I would like to correct this. I think we ought to correct this. I 
think it is time for us to give people back the taxes which we took 
from them. It is time for us to restore to the American people the wage 
increases which have been stolen by Government. So it is my privilege 
today to introduce a measure, which I think is important to millions 
and millions of working Americans.
  I want to introduce the Working Americans Wage Restoration Act. This 
measure is a measure which is designed to increase the take-home pay of 
well over 77 million working Americans. It is a measure which would say 
that individuals, when they pay their Social Security taxes, have a 
right to deduct that tax payment from their income taxes. The payroll 
taxes, the Social Security taxes, would continue to be paid. There is 
nothing in this measure which would impair the Social Security trust 
fund. But right now American workers are being taxed on a tax. They pay 
their Social Security taxes but they also have to pay income tax on the 
money they use to pay their Social Security tax. A tax on a tax is 
something America has never long tolerated. It is time for us to say 
that we will not double tax American workers in this way.
  It is especially egregious, it is especially aggravating, it is a 
special affront to the American people to say to them that you have to 
pay this tax on a tax. Half the tax is paid by people, the other half 
is paid by corporations. And, guess what, corporations do not pay a tax 
on a tax. Corporations can deduct from their income tax the amount of 
Social Security tax they pay as a part of the payroll tax.
  So it is time for us to provide equity to the American people. For 
most Americans, the payroll tax is the most substantial of all taxes. 
So my proposal, which I send to the desk, is a proposal to eliminate 
the tax on this tax. Mr. President, I submit a bill for filing today at 
this time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The bill will be received and appropriately 
referred.
  Mr. ASHCROFT. Mr. President, this bill has endorsements of a wide 
variety of groups and individuals. Jack Kemp, who was the chairman of 
the Tax Reform Commission, appointed by our leader, has endorsed this. 
It was a part of the Commission report. Carroll Campbell, of the Tax 
Reform Commission; Grover Norquist, Americans for Tax Reform; David 
Keating, National Taxpayers Union; David Keene and Bill Pascoe, 
American Conservative Union; Steve Moore, Cato Institute; Jack Faris, 
NFIB; Steve Entin, of IRET; Aldona Robbins, Fiscal Associates; Tom 
Schatz, of Citizens Against Government Waste; Jim Carter, of the RNC; 
Greg Conko, of Competitive Enterprise Institute; Paul Huard, National 
Association of Manufacturers; Paul Beckner, Nancy Mitchell, and Decy 
Gray, Citizens for a Sound Economy; Beau Boulter, of the United Seniors 
Association, has endorsed this; Karen Kerrigan, of the Small Business 
Survival Committee; J. D. Foster, of the Tax Foundation; David L. 
Thompson, the Business Leadership Council--all have endorsed this 
matter, and we are grateful for their endorsements.

  This matter is cosponsored in the Senate by Senators Lott, DeWine, 
Mack, Hatch, Smith, Craig, and Shelby and sponsored in the House by 
Congressman Nethercutt, cosponsored by Congressmen Crane, Hostettler 
and Congresswoman Dunn. I thank all of these people, along with Gordon 
Jones, of the Seniors Coalition, for their participation in promoting 
this important idea.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.
  Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, I am pleased to join my colleague from 
Missouri, John Ashcroft, in the introduction of this legislation, and I 
thank him for the thoughtfulness and, most important, the 
foresightedness that I think this legislation represents.
  The Senator spoke well when he said Americans will not for long 
tolerate double taxation, and it is unique in the area of Social 
Security taxes that we allow corporate America, in their partnering in 
this tax, to deduct it, but we do not allow the individual who must pay 
that tax do so. So, as a result of the first $62,700 of income, the 
individual is, in essence, double taxed.
  My colleague from Missouri today has introduced legislation in 
essence saying that the time of that fallacy is over and that, if we 
really want to restore the wage-earning capability of the American 
worker, we should let them keep the money they have earned, and we do 
so with this legislation today. For a typical two-income family--and 
most families are becoming that now--the Federal income tax liability 
would be dropped by more than $1,000.

[[Page S4939]]

  Here we are at this moment on the floor of the Senate trying to 
resolve the issue of a Federal gas tax that pulls billions of dollars 
out of the pocketbook of the American taxpayer. We have seen a 
frustration expressed by working men and women in this country for the 
last several years that they just do not get ahead. They keep getting a 
salary increase, but nothing comes home, which does not translate into 
money in the back pocket or money to buy the new car or money to help 
finance their children's education or money to improve their lifestyle 
in some form.
  In fact, out of all that frustration, and while our President talks 
about a strong economy, it is an economy that is just millions of jobs 
less strong than it ought to be for the very reason that the Senator 
from Missouri has so articulately spoken: the dragdown, if you will, of 
the ability of the American producers, working men and women, to retain 
that which they work so hard for and, therefore, to collect it, to put 
it in savings, if they will, to spend it for their own purposes, to 
provide for their children.
  In other words, the American dream does not quite seem to be as clear 
as it used to be. I suggest, Mr. President, that one of the reasons is 
this kind of Government intrusion, if you will, double taxation. The 
legislation, the Working Americans Wage Restoration Act, introduced 
today by my colleague, John Ashcroft, that I have cosponsored along 
with others, in my opinion, begins to, once again, brighten the 
American dream.
  It is part of what we are here on the floor debating today. Some of 
our colleagues argue that the way you solve the human crisis in this 
country, no matter how that crisis is defined, is to bring about a 
Government program. I suggest that most Americans in our country today 
can solve their own crises if they simply have the tools of solution. 
One of the great tools of solution for problem solving is the ability 
to retain your own earnings so you can spend it for yourself and your 
family to improve your lot in society or to correct a problem that has 
somehow gone wrong.
  This legislation offers that opportunity, and I hope that it gets 
heard, gets debated. I relish an opportunity for the Senate to debate 
it and vote upon it.
  Mr. President, as we will in the next little while decide whether 
this Senate is going to vote on a gas tax repeal or whether we are 
going to find some loophole, as the other side now struggles to do to 
argue that this is no good, is going to be a unique challenge for all 
of us.
  Like you, I did not vote for this gas tax increase. I am a Westerner, 
and I recognize the kind of burden you place on somebody who must 
commute the long miles in the West, or the farmer or rancher who uses 
fuel as a tremendous tool of their production, and we lessen their 
ability to profit when we increase the cost of their tools, their tools 
of incomemaking, if you will.
  That is part of what this debate is all about. But the idea that we 
would use a gas tax, which we have traditionally directed toward roads 
and bridges and improving the transportation of our country and, 
therefore, improving the ability of this economy to expand that my 
colleague from Missouri talks about--the business of growth in the 
economy should be the business of Government not getting in the way but 
staying out of the way and promoting that growth. The gas tax has been 
one that always has. It has promoted growth in the economy by the 
building of roads and bridges and allowing the kind of flow of labor 
that has been the hallmark of our society.
  But this President, President Clinton, said, ``I need that money to 
pay for social programs,'' even when in 1992, Candidate Clinton said, 
``I won't increase the gas tax. It's the wrong kind of thing to do. It 
does not allow the economy to grow and expand.''
  But of course, promises made, promises broken, tax increase, billions 
of dollars now pouring out of the economy of our country and into the 
hands of Government to be spent in social programs.
  Is it a big part of the gas increase, the fuel costs that consumers 
are about today? No, it is not, but it is an important issue to be 
debated and voted upon to return not only the gas tax to its 
traditional use but to reduce the overall ability of Government to 
spend and to expand programs.
  You are going to hear more talk today, as you have had for the last 
several days, that somehow this does damage to Government. I suggest 
you just cut the spending of Government in direct relation to the 
amount of revenue that will remain not as a tax but as an income to the 
consumer in the consumer's pocket.
  Right now, every time that consumer pulls up to a gas pump, sticks 
the nozzle in the tank of their car, they see a tremendous outpouring 
from the pocketbook.
  So, if we were to pass legislation of the kind just introduced by my 
colleague from Missouri, if we were to repeal the gas tax and allow 
that to remain in the pocket of the consumer, we would see the kind of 
growth and job creation in our economy that we have not seen, that 
cannot be talked about by this administration because of the taxes that 
have been pushed through stifling the overall ability of that economy 
to grow.
  Growth, progrowth, work incentives, 500,000 new jobs possibly created 
by the legislation of the Senator from Missouri, that two-income family 
being able to retain more of their income, $1,000-plus a year--that is 
the type of thing this Congress ought to be talking about and doing 
something about instead of talking about, ``Oh, my goodness, this takes 
away from our ability to spend. We might have to reduce this program or 
that program.''
  Mr. President, we just left tax freedom day. We just said to the 
American taxpayer, ``Today is the day when you've paid your taxes, and 
you can start earning for yourself.'' Last week I stood on the floor of 
the Senate and said that the first 3 hours of every working day the 
taxpayer, or the worker, spent their time working for Government, both 
at the State and Federal level.
  Somehow that must change if we are to get the kind of productivity in 
our economy, job creation and self-well-being to once again brighten 
the American dream instead of progressively dimming it, as Government 
can so successfully do if it constantly takes away from the individuals 
their ability to earn, save, invest, retain, provide for themselves and 
their families.
  So I thank my colleague from Missouri for his insightfulness and 
innovativeness in proposing this legislation. I hope that in the coming 
year this becomes a major part of what this Congress is about and what 
this Senate is about in providing for the American people.
                                 ______