[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 87 (Thursday, June 13, 1996)]
[House]
[Page H6403]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           THE AMERICAN DREAM

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Tennessee [Mr. Hilleary] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. HILLEARY. Mr. Speaker, today we send more money to the tax 
collector than we spend combined on food, clothing, and shelter. In 
1950, taxes just took a fraction of the working family's income, but 
today almost half of what the working person earns goes to the 
government in one form or another. Half.
  Mr. Speaker, in the America my parents grew up in, if you worked hard 
and played by the rules, you had enough money left over from your 
paycheck to put something away for the future and you still had enough 
for those little extras that help make life special, at least your 
material life, like maybe taking your family on a vacation, for 
example.
  That was what the American dream was all about. The American dream 
was also about making sure that children had more opportunities, more 
choices, and a better life than their parents.

                              {time}  2300

  And they should have those things. Then why is it for the first time 
in our history an entire generation of Americans has lost hope and 
confidence in their future? Why have we lost the vision of dreaming 
dreams and of unlimited possibilities?
  The answer for too many people lies in Washington, DC. For decades, 
Mr. Speaker, Washington has told America that everything is OK, while 
it spent our children's inheritance and undermined their future. For 
too long, Washington has spent more than it takes in and spent our 
hard-earned tax dollars unwisely just to pay for a growing Washington 
bureaucracy. A bureaucracy that includes 160 different job training 
programs, 240 education programs, 300 economic development programs and 
500 urban aid programs, just to mention a very few.
  How does Washington afford all of these overlapping programs? By 
raising our taxes through the roof. Just ask our President. He was not 
in office 100 days before attempting to take even more of the hard-
working people's hard-earned dollars.
  By comparison, Republicans in Congress spent our first 100 days 
trying to desperately give tax relief to those same people but it was 
vetoed by the President. It should not surprise anyone that more and 
more American families find it difficult to make ends meet; that more 
and more Americans are forced to live paycheck to paycheck; and, that 
too many Americans want to put something away for the future but are 
not able to do it.
  We should not be surprised by Bill Clinton's response. Against 
unanimous Republican opposition, Mr. Clinton imposed the largest tax 
hike in American history, $264 billion, yet he thinks if we take that 
money to pay for more and more government programs, somehow this will 
make people's lives better off.
  It just cannot happen that way. The cost of Mr. Clinton's policies to 
the typical American family in higher taxes and lower earnings is 
$2,600 and all of us have felt that crunch; specially those who work 
for a living. Clinton's tax trap costs a lot of money and higher taxes 
means less savings and a more uncertain future, and that is why we have 
so many people in this country so afraid of the future and I share that 
fear.
  These are real people with real concerns and real fires, and for them 
I ask every Washington bureaucrat, every Washington lawyer, every 
Washington lobbyist and frankly every Washington liberal, what is so 
extreme about asking Washington to live within its means? What is so 
extreme about demanding that Washington not spend extravagantly at the 
expense of our children?
  Is it right to punish working families who are trying to save for the 
future or just trying to get ahead? Of course it is not. The liberals 
and the bureaucrats will tell you to work just a little harder for 
them. I say it is time we stopped working for the government tax 
collector and that next extra overlapping government program and start 
working for ourselves. It is time to end the tax trap and to give the 
American family some well-deserved tax relief. It is way past time to 
return power, influence, and money where it belongs: back to America's 
working families.

                          ____________________