[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 40 (Tuesday, April 8, 1997)]
[House]
[Pages H1308-H1309]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




             RAISING TAXES WILL NOT HELP AMERICA'S CHILDREN

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Florida [Mr. Scarborough] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. SCARBOROUGH. Mr. Speaker, earlier this morning I heard many floor 
speeches from people on the other side of the aisle talking about how 
much they love children and how they want to create a new layer of 
bureaucracy and raise more taxes on the American people to help 
children.
  I found this to be very interesting, to say the least, considering 
that these same people that have been so interested in helping children 
across this country have over the past 40 years accumulated a $5.6 
trillion debt. In the name of helping children and helping farms and 
helping businesses, actually what they have done is, they have put us 
in a position where our children's future has been mortgaged at a $5.6 
trillion price tag.
  A lot of people ask, in my town hall meetings, what does this really 
mean? How much is $5.6 trillion? And this Easter, as I was going across 
the district, I decided to give them this example:
  If you made a million dollars every day, from the day that Jesus 
Christ was born 2,000 years ago, a million dollars every day for 2,000 
years, you would not make enough money to pay off our Federal debt. If 
you made a million dollars every day for the first 2,000 years and then 
made a million dollars every day from today until the year 4000 A.D. 
and added all that up, you still would not have enough money to pay off 
our Federal debt. In fact, you would still be $1.6 trillion short.
  Now, that is the debt that we are passing on to my 9-year-old boy, my 
6-year-old boy, and to future generations, and yet we still have more 
liberals saying we need to tax more, we need to spend more, we need to 
create bureaucracies to help the children. The fact is that we are 
actually stealing money from their pockets.
  Their argument comes down to this. They love children so much that 
they

[[Page H1309]]

are going to steal more money from children to help children. I just do 
not follow that.
  Now, what will it mean to our children 20, 30 years from now if we 
continue to tax and spend just at the level that we are taxing and 
spending at now? Forget about new programs that they are proposing, but 
what if we just stay on the path that we are on right now?
  Well, Senator Bob Kerrey, who had a great Commission on Entitlements, 
ended up recognizing that our children 30 years from now would be 
paying a tax rate of 89 percent. Eighty-nine percent. What that means 
is that for every dollar my boys make 20 years from now, they are going 
to have to pay 89 cents of it to Washington, DC; 89 cents out of every 
dollar they earn will go to Washington, DC, in Federal taxes.
  And yet these same people who are supposedly defenders of children 
are saying they are going to pay for this kiddie care, this new 
program, by raising taxes more. I guess the past is prologue. Tax and 
spend, tax and spend, tax and spend, tax and spend. It is all they 
know. It is all they have ever known. It is all they will ever know.
  They can wear children's ties, they can come on the floor and talk 
about how much they love kids, they can talk about how much they love 
my boys and your children and your grandchildren by starting these new 
programs, but the one thing they cannot do is, they cannot erase the 
fact that they have already bankrupted future generations, and they 
want to come back for more and more and more and more.
  We are $5.6 trillion in debt. That is an unmistakable fact. Nobody 
can shake their heads on that and say it is not so, because it is. We 
are $5.6 trillion in debt. Democratic Senator Bob Kerrey tells us our 
children are going to be paying 89 percent in taxes 20 years from now.
  We either take care of the problem today or we selfishly leave our 
children with an America where it is impossible to pursue the same 
American dream that my parents and my grandparents left for me. My late 
grandfather worked through the Depression to keep his family afloat. He 
served in World War II, the Korean War, and gave his life so I could 
pursue the American dream. That is the least that I can do for my 
children.

                          ____________________