[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 44 (Tuesday, April 15, 1997)]
[House]
[Pages H1491-H1506]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                TAX LIMITATION CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The pending business is the further 
consideration of the joint resolution (H.J. Res. 62) proposing an 
amendment to the Constitution of the United States with respect to tax 
limitations.
  The Clerk read the title of the joint resolution.

                              {time}  1645

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Solomon). The gentleman from Florida 
[Mr. Canady] has 36\1/2\ minutes remaining, the gentleman from Texas 
[Mr. Barton] has 19\1/2\ minutes remaining, and the gentleman from 
Virginia [Mr. Scott] has 43\1/2\ minutes remaining.
  Mr. CANADY of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3\1/2\ minutes to the 
gentleman from Florida [Mr. Stearns].
  (Mr. STEARNS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his 
remarks.)
  Mr. STEARNS. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to express my strong support 
for the tax limitation amendment. What could I say in this short amount 
of time that would change many Members on that side of the aisle? I 
thought carefully about it. Did all of my colleagues know, perhaps they 
heard this before, that the Constitution has been amended 27 times? 
Perhaps they did not know in the first 4 years of this country's 
history they amended the Constitution 10 times. Perhaps they did not 
know this, but at that point they prohibited any taxes at all.
  Mr. Speaker, the Founding Fathers did not want to have any taxes. 
They were interested in perhaps real estate taxes or a sales tax, but 
they did not honestly believe in taxing up to 39.5 percent, almost 40 
percent. When you add State income tax and local taxes, you are talking 
about for people, some people are paying 55 percent.
  Our Founding Fathers 220 years ago, of course, had the foresight to 
use supermajority for certain things. Impeachment, talking about 
expelling a Member of Congress, overriding the veto, they foresaw the 
need for a supermajority. They understood firsthand what could happen 
with corruption and power. The power to tax is what we are talking 
about today, the ruination of overtaxation. The gentleman from Texas is 
simply offering an amendment to slow this process down.
  Quite simply, our forefathers fought a war to ensure freedom from 
unchecked oppression. They fought a war basically to prevent ruination 
of taxation, which we have today. So the gentleman from Texas is simply 
trying to stop this by saying let us have a two-thirds majority.
  The American people do not like and trust their Government. They have 
said that over and over again. It is 1997, and the Government needs to 
be put in check just like the modern-day King George III which we are 
trying to do today what our forefathers tried to do when they started 
this country. Over the past 40 years, Congress has continually 
increased taxes. Since 1981, there have been 19 separate tax increases, 
in 1993, the largest tax increase in history. It is obvious to anybody 
who has studied the political landscape, if we do not have this 
amendment, we will have increased taxes. Mr. Speaker, we increased 
taxes on airline tickets, and I am ashamed that we passed that vote 
without a counterbalancing amendment to make it budget neutral.
  In 1775, the rallying cry was no taxation without representation. 
Here we are, over 200 years later, and it has not changed. The American 
taxpayers are fed up. They are looking at bloated bureaucracy and they 
want a change.
  Daniel Webster once said, the power to tax is the power to destroy. 
This afternoon, these words ring with resonance on April 15. What we 
want to do here is very, very simple. We only want to make it harder to 
raise taxes, to make it just a little bit more difficult

[[Page H1492]]

for this Congress to prevent someone from succeeding in the American 
dream, to make sure that the power to tax is not abused. Simply put, we 
want to put the power back where it belongs, back where the Founding 
Fathers put it, in the hands of the people.
  I urge my colleagues to put partisanship aside and to cast their vote 
for the taxpayers of this Nation. Remember, our Founding Fathers 
amended the Constitution 10 times in 4 years, and it has been amended 
27 times since this Republic has been founded. This is a very simple 
step forward, on a symbolic day of April 15, to bring this Congress 
under control.
  Mr. SCOTT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentlewoman from 
Texas [Ms. Jackson-Lee].
  (Ms. JACKSON-LEE of Texas asked and was given permission to revise 
and extend her remarks.)
  Ms. JACKSON-LEE of Texas. Mr. Speaker, for the record for the 
American people, we have already spoken on the issue of responding to 
the desire to have real tax relief. I voted for the Taxpayers 
Protection Act. We voted just now to prevent browsing in personal files 
of taxpayers.
  I support giving families in America the right to have tax relief 
such as a tax credit for children. We can do this in a manner that 
allows us to uphold the Constitution. My colleagues who have been 
citing the Constitution need to just read the responsibilities of this 
U.S. Congress, for section 8 says that the Congress shall have power to 
provide for the common defense and the welfare of this Nation.
  This particular resolution does not in any way allow us to protect 
you by having a strong defense. This two-thirds resolution quickly 
undermines the majority rule that the Constitution wants us to have. As 
the Vice President traveled this weekend to the Midwest, he never saw 
such devastation. This two-thirds amendment clearly says that, when 
there are floods or freeze, hurricanes or earthquakes, this country 
will be crippled and not able to do the business of the people.
  It is clear that this majority process, overlooking the majority 
process by requiring two-thirds, clearly undermines the ability of this 
Congress to operate this Government. The supporters of this legislation 
support the fact or mention the fact that there are supermajority 
requirements pertaining to other aspects of our business. Yes, they do; 
treaties as well as the impeachment trial. But it does not impact on 
day-to-day operations of keeping this Government running. When an 
American citizen is strained and oppressed by an earthquake, a flood, a 
hurricane, they want this Government to act. This legislation does not 
allow them to act.
  Interestingly enough, let me read to my colleagues from the Concord 
Coalition, a bipartisan coalition that believes in bringing down the 
deficit, Sam Nunn, former Senator, Warren Rudman, cochairs: Enactment 
of this constitutional amendment would be detrimental to the budget 
process. Accordingly, the Concord Coalition of Citizens councils has 
selected this issue as a 1997 key vote for purposes of its tough 
choices deficit reduction scorecard.
  What we need to be doing is bringing down the deficit. We do not need 
a constitutional amendment to bring down the deficit. In considering 
how to balance the Federal budget and keep it balanced over the long 
term, all options for reducing spending or raising revenues must be on 
the table. No area of the budget on either of the spending or the 
revenue side should receive preferential treatment such as requiring a 
supermajority.
  This is bad legislation. More important, do we know what it prevents 
us from doing? It prevents us from eliminating tax fraud. In order to 
eliminate tax fraud, we will have to get a two-thirds supermajority. 
What American citizen would tell us they enjoy the tax fraud that 
others are perpetrating on this Nation?
  The other aspect is, I offered an amendment to protect Social 
Security and Medicare. This legislation will not allow us to protect 
the citizens of the 21st century, baby boomers who are coming into 
their own in need of Social Security and Medicare.
  When the baby boomers again begin to retire not that many years from 
now, the country will be in an era of constant fiscal strain. To avoid 
destructive deficits, there will be a need to respond operationally, 
either by tax increases or spending cuts. This amendment does not allow 
us to save Social Security, Medicare, and any other manner of operating 
this Government.
  It is interesting that the majority as well has waived such 
supermajority legislation when it has been for their benefit; five 
times in fact over the last 2 years. One in particular, on October 19, 
1995, they waived in consideration of the Medicare preservation bill.
  That is what I am trying to say to my colleagues, but the Medicare 
preservation bill would have imposed additional taxes on withdrawals of 
Medicare savings accounts. When it is to the advantage of the majority 
that has offered this legislation, they will waive such votes on tax 
increases.
  I am saying to the American public that what we have is a 
responsibility to balance the budget. We must do it. We have a 
responsibility to bring down the deficit. We must do it. But the 
Constitution says we have a responsibility to provide for defense and 
welfare. To do that, we must be able to operate this House, this Nation 
in a manner that says, we the people.
  Let me just finish by saying that Alexander Hamilton noted that the 
sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old 
parchments or musty records. They are written as with a sunbeam on the 
whole volume of human nature.
  I would say to my colleagues that, whatever we do in the House, the 
sunbeam should shine on it. Whatever we do on behalf of the American 
people, bringing down the deficit, operating this Government, the 
sunbeam should shine. This is an undercover amendment. This is bad law, 
a bad amendment to the Constitution. We should not support it.
  Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak in opposition to this resolution to 
House Joint Resolution 62, which would amend the Constitution to 
require that any legislation raising taxes be subject to a two-thirds 
majority vote in the House and the Senate. If this amendment is added 
to the Constitution, Congress will not have the flexibility that is 
necessary to meet the important fiscal priorities of our Nation.
  Let me also point out that one of our Founding Fathers and Framers of 
the Constitution James Madison, stated in his Federalist Papers, that 
requiring more than majority of a quorum for a decision, will result in 
minority rule and the fundamental principle of free government would be 
reversed. While there are several supermajority voting requirements 
referenced in the Constitution, none pertain to the day-to-day 
operations of the Government or fiscal policy matters. What is 
particularly troubling this Member of Congress is the fact that the 
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the proposed constitutional 
amendment, would make it more difficult to address the long-term 
financing problems of Social Security and Medicare. The Center has 
stated that the 1996 report of the Social Security trustees, projects 
the Social Security trust fund will start running deficits by 2012 and 
exhaust all of its reserves--that is, become insolvent--by 2029. In 
order to avoid this shortfall or insolvency, Congress must be able to 
use the tax system, and if not, then the Social Security trust fund 
will remain in grave danger. That is why I offered an amendment both in 
full committee and before the Committee on Rules which would have 
preserved the solvency of the Social Security trust fund. Both of these 
efforts failed.
  Let me also point out Mr. Speaker that Republicans have frequently 
waived House rules requiring a three-fifths majority vote to increase 
taxes. Last Congress, the majority waived this three-fifths 
requirements for tax increases on four separate occasions. On April 5, 
1995, during the consideration of H.R. 1215, the Contract With America 
Tax Relief Act, there was a parliamentary ruling that the new House 
rule did not apply to the bill even through the bill would have 
repealed the current 50-percent exclusion for capital gains from sales 
of certain small business stock. On October 26, 1995, the House rule 
was waived for the consideration of fiscal year 1996, the budget 
reconciliation bill, which contained several tax increases. On October 
19, 1995, the House rule was waived for the consideration of the 
Medicare preservation bill, which would have imposed additional taxes 
on withdrawals form Medicare savings account. On March 28, 1996, the 
Republicans waived the house rule for consideration of the health 
coverage availability and affordability bill, which imposed additional 
taxes on withdrawals from Medicare savings accounts.
  Mr. Speaker, it is imperative that this House vote this proposed 
constitutional amendment down and let us preserve the intent that the

[[Page H1493]]

Founding Fathers had in mind when they decided that votes in the 
Congress should be decided by a simple majority.
  Mr. CANADY of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the 
gentleman from Ohio [Mr. Portman].
  Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. Speaker, let me say at the outset, Members are 
talking a lot about the Founders. In the Constitution, of course, 
article I section 9 actually prohibits the kind of income tax that we 
currently have in this country, and that is why in 1913, Congress 
passed the 16th amendment. So if we are going to look back at the 
Founders, I think there is not a good argument for not changing the way 
we do business here.
  Let me just say that for the last year, as cochairman of the National 
Commission on Restructuring the IRS, I have been spending a lot of time 
delving into the tax system generally, and the IRS in particular. We 
are going to issue our final recommendations in June. The gentleman 
from Pennsylvania [Mr. Coyne] on the other side of the aisle is on that 
Commission. I cochair with Senator Bob Kerrey. It is bipartisan, the 
administration is represented and it has a lot of good private sector 
expertise.
  Our goal, really, with this Commission is nothing short of having 
Americans in the future associate April 15 less with the frustration 
and anxiety and headaches connected with their tax system and more with 
pleasant things, like the beautiful spring day we are enjoying here in 
Washington today. Now, that is a tall order and it is difficult to get 
there.
  But, we think there are three ways we can do it. First, we have to 
restructure the IRS. We have to change the IRS from top to bottom so 
there is real accountability in terms of its management. Second, the 
IRS has to be more taxpayer friendly. A 21st century IRS has to be a 
customer-driven organization.
  Third, and I think most importantly, we have determined, after 
looking at the IRS from every angle over the last year, that we have to 
stop Congress from passing new, complex tax legislation. We have to 
give people a break from taxes.
  This relates to what we are talking about today. That is why I like 
so much what the gentleman from Texas [Mr. Barton] has been promoting, 
because it will force Congress to be more deliberative as we do tax 
legislation in this body. It will force Congress to analyze the impact 
of increasing taxes, which we clearly have not done over the years. And 
it will keep Congress from continuously changing the code, sometimes in 
a rather haphazard manner, because we will have this new requirement in 
place.
  So I want to commend the gentleman from Texas [Mr. Barton] and others 
for pushing this issue and frankly for shedding light on the reality 
that Congress does not act as deliberately and thoughtfully with regard 
to taxes as it should.

                              {time}  1700

  Mr. CANADY of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the 
gentleman from Indiana [Mr. McIntosh].
  Mr. McINTOSH. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of this constitutional 
amendment to require a supermajority in order for Congress to raise 
taxes. I want to commend the subcommittee and the full committee for 
working on this, and in particular commend my colleague, the gentleman 
from Texas [Mr. Barton], for championing this issue. I only wish we 
could make sure it was part of our balanced budget amendment as well.
  Everywhere I go in Indiana, I talk to people at factory gates, at the 
shopping mall, at restaurants, and I ask them if they have any message 
for Washington. And time and time again, I hear from those people: Yes, 
cut our taxes; I am working two jobs, working overtime, and the 
Government seems to take all of that in taxes. My wife and I are both 
working, and we cannot make ends meet.
  We have to cut taxes in this country, but we would not have to do 
that if we had had this amendment in the last 40 years to put a check 
on all of the tax increases.
  A young man named Garth Rector, who works as a grounds keeper at a 
local college today, came to one of my town meetings about a year ago 
and said, ``You know, I figured it out. I have two kids. And if you 
guys pass that $500 tax credit, that is about 20 bucks a week that I 
will get more in my paycheck, and that will go a long way to buying gas 
and food for the kids. So I hope you get that done.''
  It has gotten to a point in this country where the average family no 
longer pays 5, 6, 10 percent of their income, but 23 percent of their 
income, to the Federal Government in taxes. When we add State and local 
taxes, it is almost 40 percent. It is no wonder that working families 
in this country have a difficult time seeing their standard of living 
increase. We have to cut taxes, we have to eliminate the death tax, we 
have to cut the tax on investment.
  In my State, we have seen a lot of jobs that have been sent down to 
Mexico and overseas, but if we cut in half the tax on investment, there 
would be $2.5 billion of investment money available that did not go to 
the Federal Government but could stay in Indiana and create new, good 
jobs.
  Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of this amendment today because, as I 
said, if we had only had this amendment over the last 40 years, I am 
convinced that today the average American family would keep much more 
of its hard-earned dollars and not send it to Washington, where it sees 
it being wasted on one program after another.
  Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the 
gentleman from Arizona [Mr. Salmon].
  Mr. SALMON. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this 
time.
  It is really appropriate we are here on April 15, when people are 
feverishly trying to scrape together their hard-earned incomes so that 
they can keep this wonderful Federal Government going.
  It is interesting. I listened to the other side, those people that 
oppose making it tougher to raise taxes, and it is those same people 
that say we do not need a constitutional amendment to balance the 
budget, we simply have the willpower here in Congress.
  Somehow they believe that the American people are going to wake up 
and say Congress is going to be different from the last 40 years; 
things are going to be completely different now into the future, 
because suddenly they have this resolve; they do not need to have their 
feet kept to the fire.
  Frankly, I think the American people are on to us. Once again those 
opposed to any limits on Federal spending have come out of the woodwork 
to proclaim that a constitutional amendment limiting Congress' ability 
to spend other people's money is dangerous and, indeed, unnecessary. 
They claim that willpower alone can limit taxes and spending.
  I will not doubt the commitment of the U.S. Congress to cut spending 
and balance the budget. Just look at the great job Congress has done in 
the past. Nor will I question the resolve of this President, who boldly 
declared last year in his State of the Union Address that the era of 
big government is over. Although he has vetoed two balanced budgets and 
has yet to produce a balanced budget that really balances, we can all 
sleep like angels, knowing this time he truly means it.
  Mr. Speaker, it is time to end this charade. For decades the 
politicians in Washington have promised to rein in Federal spending, 
yet every year the tax burden shouldered by the American people 
continues to rise. Only by making it harder to raise taxes can we give 
the American people a reason to believe that things are going to be a 
little different here in Washington, DC.
  Mr. SCOTT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 6 minutes to the gentleman from 
Colorado [Mr. Skaggs].
  Mr. SKAGGS. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this 
time.
  Mr. Speaker, we are here this evening engaged in a great rite of 
spring political theater. I am impressed with the acting ability of 
many on the other side and those in support of this because they are 
pretending to be engaged in serious constitutional lawmaking.
  This is constitutional gibberish. It is constitutional mush. It is an 
insult to the Constitution to be considering this proposal. It is bad 
policy. It is bad law.
  Second only perhaps to a declaration of war, an amendment to the 
Constitution ought to be the occasion for the most serious and 
deliberate application of the talents of this body to the important 
responsibilities we bear to the

[[Page H1494]]

Nation. And anyone who attempts to suggest that the language in this 
amendment could be implemented logically, coherently, without the 
regular interference of the courts is simply kidding themselves.
  This amendment, among many of its failings, violates the fundamental 
principle of this representative democracy, the fundamental principle 
of free government; as Madison put it, the principle of majority rule.
  There are a few exceptions to that in the Constitution, I will grant 
my colleagues, but none, none, none goes to the day-to-day fundamental 
responsibilities of operating this Government.
  The logical corollary of supermajority rule is minority control. And 
under this amendment, Mr. Speaker, 34 Senators, representing under 10 
percent of the population of this country, would be in a position to 
control the Government's revenue and tax policy.
  Aside from that absurdity, think of the many, many impractical 
consequences, both intended and unintended. One would be that, for all 
practical purposes, this amendment, if it were to become law, would 
lock into the Tax Code its provisions as it existed at the time of 
ratification.
  If we like the tax system the way it is, or if we are supremely 
confident that between now and ratification we will have gotten it just 
right, then we may support this amendment with good conscience. 
Otherwise, I think we should have great, great pause and reservations.
  Another related consequence would be to make it infinitely more 
difficult for us to achieve what many on both sides of the aisle hold 
forth as our principal responsibility right now, and that is balancing 
the budget, especially as that effort relates to gaining control of the 
growth of entitlement programs.
  And a final and, I think, very, very persuasive reason to have 
second, third, fourth, and fifth thoughts about this piece of 
constitutional stuff is the experience that this body has had now for 
over 2 years with our House rule having purported to cause us to 
require a three-fifths vote whenever we deal with tax increases.
  We already are aware of the confusion that has been generated by the 
ambiguities in that provision. Compound that, if you will, by what 
would be the result if this similar provision were put in the 
Constitution.
  Wiser men than we considered and rejected at the time of the founding 
of this great Republic similar constraints on majority rule. They 
rejected them because of their then recent experience with the 
impossibility of governing a much smaller and less complicated Nation 
in those days under the supermajority requirements of the Articles of 
Confederation. In other words, we have a Constitution today, in large 
part, because it was impossible to govern this Nation under 
supermajority provisions after the Revolution.

  This provision would go far beyond any constitutional precedent in 
effectively paralyzing the ability of future Congresses to deal with 
one of the most nuanced, subtle areas of public policy: revenue and 
taxes.
  Now, recent national campaigns and debates have surfaced a number of 
very intriguing ideas about the way we should change the Federal tax 
system. If this amendment were now in the Constitution, however, we 
would be essentially forestalled from taking any of those up, because 
it is highly unlikely that any of them would gather a two-thirds vote 
in both Houses, and all of them involve some increases in taxes, some 
provision designed to increase some taxes over others, whether it is 
consumption taxes or any number of other variations.
  Mr. Speaker, I will close by recalling for the body the experience 
that we have had recently in dealing with our own three-fifths rule, 
not a two-thirds rule but a three-fifths rule under House procedures.
  It has been waived during consideration of the majority party's 1996 
budget reconciliation, the majority's Medicare bill, the Kennedy-
Kassebaum health care bill, the Small Business Protection Act, the 
Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 
1995. All of these waivers have been accompanied by dispute and 
confusion as to the meaning of that rule.
  This constitutional amendment is replete with even more profound 
ambiguities and invitations to litigation and confusion. We do our 
constituents no service, we certainly do the Framers of the 
Constitution no service, we do our future colleagues in this body no 
service by entertaining this silly idea any further.
  Mr. Speaker, I oppose this proposed amendment to the Constitution to 
require the vote of two-thirds of both Houses of Congress to approve 
any bill changing the internal revenue laws in a way that would 
increase the revenue collected by the Government.
  This proposed amendment is a bad idea and bad constitutional law.
  Second only, perhaps, to a declaration of war, an amendment to the 
Constitution ought to command the most serious and deliberate sort of 
legislative review, examination, and analysis we are capable of. It 
deserves better treatment than a legislative rush job to have a 
symbolic vote on the deadline day for paying income taxes. The 
Constitution shouldn't be used as a vehicle for a political bumper 
sticker.
  I would, however, like to commend the sponsors of this bill on one 
point. They recognize that a change in the U.S. Constitution is 
necessary in order to require a supermajority to pass legislation on 
this subject. In effect, they concede that the attempt by the House in 
January 1995 to simply pass a rule requiring a supermajority is not the 
proper procedure.
  I oppose this proposed constitutional amendment on a number of 
grounds. It violates what Madison called the fundamental principle of 
free government, the principle of majority rule. The Constitution makes 
very few exceptions to the principle, none having to do with the core, 
on going responsibilities of Government. We should be extremely wary of 
any further exceptions, especially if it would complicate the essential 
responsibilities and competency of the Government.
  We have to be mindful that the logical corollary of supermajority 
rule is minority control. And under this proposed amendment, 34 
Senators representing less that 10 percent of the American people would 
have the power to control the Government's revenue and tax policy.
  I also oppose this proposed amendment because of its almost absurdly 
impractical consequences--intended and unintended.
  One such consequence would be for all practical purposes to lock into 
law the Tax Code as it would exist at the time of this amendment's 
ratification. If you like the tax system the way it is now, or if you 
have supreme confidence that some future Congress will have gotten it 
fixed just right before ratification, you ought to live this proposal.
  Another related consequence of this proposal would be to complicate 
efforts to balance the budget, particularly as they entail reducing the 
growth of entitlement programs.
  Finally, I'm opposed to this proposed amendment because, like the 
current House three-fifths rule, it is vague and will generate 
confusion and litigation.
  I know the authors of this proposal have strong feelings about taxes. 
But simply having strong feelings isn't good reason to cede power over 
all future changes to an important area of national law to a small 
minority. Members of Congress also have very strong feelings on civil 
rights, trade, and the deployment of U.S. troops abroad. But that 
doesn't mean that we should let a minority in Congress block any 
changes in the laws on civil rights, trade, or the deployment of 
troops. In none of these areas does it serve the long-term national 
interest to undermine the principle of majority rule.
  Wiser lawmakers than we have considered the question of whether to 
require a supermajority for passage of certain kinds of legislation. At 
the Constitutional Convention, the Framers of the Constitution 
specifically considered--and rejected--proposals to require a 
supermajority to pass legislation concerning particular subjects such 
as navigation and commerce. They rejected various legislative 
supermajority proposals largely because of their experience under the 
Articles of Confederation and the paralysis caused by the Articles' 
requirement of a supermajority to raise and spend money. In other 
words, we have a Constitution because it was impossible for the country 
to function under a constitutional law such as is being proposed here.
  The Framers' judgment on this matter, including whether to retain the 
Articles' supermajority to raise revenues, should give us all cause to 
reflect on the wisdom of the proposals before the House today.
  In those cases in which the Framers did impose supermajority 
requirements, none deals with topics of regular legislative business 
central to the ongoing operation and management of the Federal 
Government, such as taxes and revenues.
  In those cases in which the Framers did impose supermajority 
requirements, only two require action by both bodies, namely, the 
override of a Presidential veto and the referral of a proposed 
amendment to the States. Both are extraordinary matters.

[[Page H1495]]

  In sum, this proposal would go far beyond any existing constitutional 
precedent. It would effectively paralyze the ability of future 
Congresses to deal with one of the most nuanced of all legislative 
issues--revenues and taxes, allowing a small minority to control 
national policy.

  Recent national campaigns and debate have brought forward a number of 
innovative ideas regarding and Federal tax system. Were it now in the 
Constitution, this new amendment would likely serve to thwart these 
ideas or other reforms. This proposed amendment would likely require a 
two-thirds vote on legislation implementing the consumption tax or 
Value Added Tax [VAT] proposed by some, which again proponents believe 
would increase economic activity and Federal revenues. There's been a 
lot of talk on both sides of the aisle about getting rid of corporate 
welfare. Many want to end corporate welfare by closing tax loopholes--
and that, of course, would likely bring in additional tax revenue from 
affected corporations and so would require a two-thirds vote under this 
proposal.
  But let's say we tried one of these ideas out before the amendment 
took effect. Is anyone certain enough that one of them is the correct 
solution to the tax reform problem that you wish to make repeal or 
revision next to impossible?
  And if this proposed amendment were part of the Constitution, it 
would probably make it more difficult to reduce taxes. If at some point 
in the future, Congress judges the budget and economy healthy enough to 
reduce taxes, how likely is it that a responsible Congress would go 
ahead and do so knowing that it would be almost impossible to raise 
rates again in the event circumstance required it?
  If now in the Constitution, this proposed amendment would certainly 
make the current efforts to balance the budget a lot more difficult. 
Whether adjusting the Consumer Price Index [CIP], or reducing business 
and tax subsidies, or narrowing the EITC, or means testing Medicare 
part B premiums, or limiting the amount of profits companies can shift 
to overseas subsidiaries--all would have to be passed by two-thirds.
  It is important to realize that the proposal being considered here 
today is not really a tax amendment at all. The word ``tax'' does not 
appear in the text, nor does ``income tax,'' ``tax rate,'' or ``new 
tax.'' It is a revenue amendment. The only legislation requiring a two-
thirds vote under this proposal is that which amends the internal 
revenue laws with the predicted effect of increasing internal revenue 
by more than a de minimis amount.

  There is no technical definition of internal revenue except perhaps 
as distinguished from revenues from external sources, such as import 
duties. All other sources of Federal revenue are presumably included 
under the language of this proposed amendment. So any legislation to 
increase any Federal fee or charge or fine would arguably be subject to 
a two-thirds vote if it results in more than a de minimis increase in 
revenues. The only way the proposal's supporters try to get around this 
problem is by having the legislative history define internal revenue 
laws creatively. I wonder what would happen if the courts were to 
decline to accept the creative definitions contained in the legislative 
history.
  And according to the proposed amendment, de minimis is to be defined 
by Congress at some later time, or quite conceivably, at each time a 
revenue bill is considered, inviting an exercise in manipulative 
definition whenever the prospect of winning two-thirds approval was 
dim.
  On the other hand, it's arguable that this proposal would not 
necessarily require approval of two-thirds for a tax rate increase. 
Some tax rate increases can actually reduce or, at least, not increase 
revenues. For example, the luxury tax on certain boats that was 
repealed in 1993 is said to have actually reduced sales so dramatically 
that associated revenues actually declined. Some even argue that most 
tax increases on business activity actually reduce Federal revenues by 
depressing economic growth. What economic theory, interpreted by which 
expert, will therefore determine the application and effect of this 
amendment if it were adopted?
  So, once you consider how this amendment might be interpreted, many 
absurd consequences come to mind.
  In the context of deficit reduction, we should also consider the 
fairness and equity implications of this amendment. Most Federal 
benefits to lower and middle-income Americans come from programs that 
depend on direct expenditures. The benefits of upper income Americans 
and corporations often come through various kinds of tax breaks. Since 
this amendment would require a simple majority to cut programs 
benefiting lower and middle-income Americans, but a supermajority to 
reduce tax benefits to wealthy Americans and corporations, it would 
unfairly bias deficit reduction and create a path of least resistance 
that would disproportionately hurt middle- and lower income citizens.
  In evaluating this proposed amendment, it's also helpful to examine 
some recent experience in the House. In the 104th Congress, the House 
pretended to operate under a new rule requiring a three-fifths vote to 
pass any increase in a Federal income tax rate. Obviously, the 
amendment before the House today would go much further.
  The short history accumulated on the application of the new House 
rule is instructive about the problems that would likely arise under 
this proposed constitutional amendment. Since the three-fifths rule has 
been in effect, it has been waived during consideration of the majority 
party's fiscal year 1996 budget reconciliation bill, the majority's 
Medicare bill, the Kennedy-Kassebaum health care bill, the Small 
Business Protection Act, and the Personal Responsibility and Work 
Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1995. These waivers have been 
accompanied by dispute and confusion as to the meaning of the rule. In 
addition, there is now general agreement that the rule should have been 
applied to the Contract With America Tax Relief Act, and that a waiver 
would have been necessary to pass that legislation.
  The amendment we are considering is for more problematic because the 
Constitution can't be waived for convenience sake when questions arise. 
And you can be certain that similar questions about the meaning of this 
amendment will arise in great number. Almost every future tax bill that 
were to pass by less than two-thirds under some claimed exemption from 
this amendment would likely be subject to protracted litigation, 
creating an outcome we ought to avoid in tax law--uncertainty and 
confusion.
  One thing we can be sure of. We don't know the future. Why would we 
wish to deprive our successors in Congress of the tools and ability to 
deal with the problems they will face? To our successors we are in 
effect saying, ``We don't care what the particular circumstances may be 
in 10 or 50 years; we don't trust you, and you're stuck with our 
expectations of your incompetence.'' What arrogance.
  I urge the Members from both sides of the aisle to take a close look 
at this proposed constitutional amendment in the light of the wisdom 
and experience of the Framers, its stifling and absurd effects, and the 
history of the House of Representatives' three-fifths rule. Treat it 
for what it is, a political statement--and one better made on the floor 
of the House than put into the U.S. Constitution.
  Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 4 minutes.
  (Mr. BARTON of Texas asked and was given permission to revise and 
extend his remarks.)
  Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I did not go to Hershey, PA, at the 
bipartisan retreat, but if I had and would have come on the floor for 
this debate this evening, I do not believe I would have used words like 
``absurd,'' ``mush,'' things of that sort. I do not think they help us.
  Mr. SKAGGS. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. BARTON of Texas. I yield to the gentleman from Colorado.
  Mr. SKAGGS. Mr. Speaker, I say to the gentleman that the purpose of 
the retreat and of our efforts to restore civility is to debate ideas, 
which I was attempting to do. If I said anything that is personal to 
the gentleman, I apologize. I was characterizing the ideas that are in 
debate. We all recognize the importance of a full and hearty debate 
about policy and ideas.
  Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, my good friend 
from Colorado meant nothing personal toward me, nor did I take it as 
such. So I want to be perfectly clear on that.
  I will say, if we are going to engage in an idea and a robust debate, 
that we should do so on the merits of the issue, and the issue at hand 
is whether we should amend the Constitution of the United States to 
require a two-thirds vote to raise taxes as they are defined in the 
internal revenue laws of this land.
  I would point out that in article I, section 9 of the Constitution 
that the Founding Fathers of the United States of America adopted, 
direct taxes were prohibited. Prohibited. There could have been a 100 
percent unanimous vote and not had an income tax. The 16th amendment to 
the Constitution, which was passed on February 3, 1913, said we could 
levy direct taxes.
  I would further point out that in the Constitution, as adopted by our 
Founding Fathers, nowhere in there, unless it says specifically that 
there is a two-thirds or some sort of a supermajority vote required, 
does it say in the presentment clause that we have to have simple 
majorities. In fact, this body

[[Page H1496]]

routinely passes many measures by a voice vote.
  So I think it is entirely appropriate to look at the tax burden that 
is currently on the American taxpayer, which averages 19 percent, which 
was before the adoption of the 16th amendment, and before the adoption 
of the first Federal income tax in 1913 it was zero, and say it is time 
to raise the bar a little higher.
  Now, I would further point out that all we have to do is look at the 
States as our laboratory to see if supermajorities for tax limitation 
work. There are 14 States that have it. It works in those 14 States. 
Four States have added it since the debate last year.
  I asked my staff to go to the States that have had it in effect for 
any length of time and find out if there are any States where it is not 
working, or is there any State that wants to repeal it, and the answer 
that we got back was ``no.'' The States that have it are happy with it. 
More States are adding to it, 40 percent in the last year, and there 
are another 5 to 10 States that have it.
  Finally, Mr. Speaker, I would point out that if we had had a two-
thirds vote requirement for a Federal income tax increase the last 10 
years in this Congress, we would have saved $666 billion in tax 
increases, because four of the last five major tax increases would not 
have passed.
  Now, I do not know about other Members, but where I come from, the 
idea of a tax limitation is not absurd, it is not silly, it is not 
mush, it is common sense. It is doing what should have been done a long 
time ago. And I would hope when the time comes, that we pass this with 
the supermajority required in the Constitution, two-thirds, to send it 
to the Senate for ratification.

                              {time}  1715

  Mr. SCOTT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from 
Oregon [Mr. DeFazio].
  Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, it is tax day. I am certainly not going to 
stand up and defend the existing system as either comprehensible to 
mere mortals or for being fair. It is extraordinarily unfair, the 
current tax system, in this country. We have heaped a massive burden on 
middle income wage earning families in this country.
  Earlier one of my colleagues from the other side of the aisle stood 
up and carried on at great length about the tax system of 40 years ago. 
The gentleman was correct. The tax system 40 years ago was much more 
fair. The top rate was twice what it is today. The wealthiest Americans 
paid twice as much percentagewise as they pay today, corporations 
carried twice as much of the total tax burden in this country as they 
do today, and they were doing quite well in the days of Dwight David 
Eisenhower.
  So corporations were paying a larger share, the wealthy were paying a 
larger share, and, yes, under those conditions middle income wage 
earning folks could pay a lower part of their salary in taxes, and we 
could have that again today. But I fear under this amendment that the 
last thing this Congress is going to do with a two-thirds vote 
requirement is raise taxes on the wealthiest one-half of 1 percent of 
the people in this country who are doing quite well, thank you very 
much, or raise taxes on those corporations who in fact are paying no 
taxes.
  Seventy-one percent of the profitable foreign corporations operating 
in the United States of America pay zero income taxes, and the rest pay 
at a marginal rate of less than 1 percent of their gross. And 30 
percent of the largest profitable U.S. multinational corporations pay 
zero income taxes in this country. Some of them pay, Intel company, 
something called a nowhere tax. That means their income is created 
nowhere, they do not pay taxes in Japan, they do not pay taxes in the 
United States. They pay taxes nowhere.
  This amendment would lock that system into place. Is that fair? No. 
Is that what our colleagues on the other side of the aisle want? I 
think not. One challenged us saying, well, those people over there do 
not support a balanced budget amendment. I do. I have been a cosponsor, 
I have supported it for a long time. Are we going to get to balancing a 
budget by saying it will require a two-thirds vote to raise taxes and 
close loopholes on those wealthy corporations and the people at the top 
who are getting away with murder now and it only takes a 50 percent 
vote plus 1 to spend more money? That sounds like a recipe for 
disaster. Come on. Give us a break here. Fifty percent to spend more 
money which people around here love to do and a two-thirds vote to 
balance that off with revenues. I think I know who is going to win 
under that formula.
  Let us talk about large mining companies. We gave away a $13 billion 
gold claim to a Canadian mining company last year for $10,000. If we 
got a royalty fee which I got in a mining reform a few years ago, that 
would be considered a tax. We should not have asked that poor Canadian 
corporation that is operating here in America and not paying income tax 
here to pay a royalty for the minerals they might extract from public 
lands. I mean $10,000 is more than fair for a $13 billion gold claim. 
To assess them a small royalty, the same that private landowners do, 
State landowners do, every other foreign nation on Earth does, Indian 
tribes do, no, the U.S. Government will not have a royalty and under 
this amendment we will never have a royalty and we will never get a 
fair share. My colleagues want to talk about operating Government as a 
business, let us operate it as a business and stop giving things away.
  This amendment quite simply is going to again open up the cash 
drawer. One-half of this body can vote to spend money on anything and 
it will require a two-thirds vote to pay for it. That sounds again, as 
I said earlier, like a recipe for disaster.
  It is time to be honest with the American people. The honest thing 
is, there has been a massive shift onto middle income and working 
families in this country and that is going to be perpetuated today if 
we pass this two-thirds requirement. When the American people finally 
wake up and they say, ``Let's close some of those loopholes, let's 
raise some money, let's pay for some things I want, like college loans 
for my kid to go to college,'' they are not going to be able to get it 
because it will only take one-third of this body to block any increases 
in revenues, any closing of loopholes, any asking the wealthy and the 
biggest corporations to pay their fair share.
  Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to reject this special interest 
amendment and move on toward fiscal sanity in this Congress and give 
real tax relief to middle income families.
  Mr. CANADY of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the 
gentleman from California [Mr. Cox].
  Mr. COX of California. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for 
yielding me this time. We have just heard an impassioned defense of the 
unfettered ability of Congress to raise taxes and my colleague from 
Oregon has pointed out a number of people whose taxes he would like to 
raise. He apparently believes that the tax limitation amendment would 
inhibit his ability to raise taxes on the rich, on mining companies, on 
the long list that he just gave us, but that would be true only if he 
were not willing to give the middle class a break at the same time.
  The truth is that it is only if you want to raise everybody's taxes 
that this tax limitation amendment would get in your way. But if what 
you want to do is ease the burden on the middle class by closing 
loopholes somewhere, this amendment would not affect you at all.
  The question before us is in the aggregate, is it too easy for 
Congress to raise taxes? Should it be more difficult for Congress to 
raise taxes? I think it is fair to say that the position of most of the 
Members who have been speaking on the Democratic side is it is not too 
difficult to raise taxes and, the corollary, taxes presently are not 
too high. We should not make a constitutional amendment, moreover, they 
say, even if taxes were too high, because tinkering with the 
Constitution does violence to the memory of our Founding Fathers.
  First on this question of whether or not it is too easy. If it were 
not too easy and not too hard, then the history of tax increases and 
tax reductions would be on parity, we would have about as many 
increases as decreases. But that has not been the history. Taxes have 
moved up and down, but over time they have gone up and up and up and 
up.

[[Page H1497]]

  When the tax was first introduced, only 2 percent of the American 
people paid it. The top rate was 7 percent. In the 1950's, the average 
family paid Federal income taxes at a rate of 4.9 percent. Today that 
is 25 percent. In 1993, we had the largest tax increase in American 
history, and since 1993, just since 1993, in the 3 years subsequent, 
individual income taxes in America have gone up over 25 percent. In the 
last year, 1996 individual income taxes went up 11 percent, even though 
the economy grew only 2 percent. We cannot keep growing Federal taxes 
and the Government at a rate so far in excess of the economy which 
supports it.
  This second argument, that we cannot amend the Constitution even if 
it is too easy because the Founding Fathers, after all, had a different 
idea in mind, would be all fine except as has been pointed out, article 
1, section 9 prohibited a tax of this kind, income tax, at all. So even 
a unanimous Congress, unanimous, would not be enough to impose income 
taxes at any level. It was the 16th amendment to the Constitution, not 
adopted until the 20th century, that gave us this problem, and it is 
perfectly appropriate for us to fix it with a constitutional amendment.
  In short, raising taxes should no longer be Washington's first 
resort. Government should not continue growing so much faster than the 
economy which supports it, and this tax limitation amendment should be 
adopted.
  Mr. SCOTT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from 
Pennsylvania [Mr. Klink].
  Mr. KLINK. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this 
time.
  Mr. Speaker, my problem is not that we are attempting to amend the 
Constitution. My problem is that we are always, it seems, attempting to 
amend the Constitution. This is twice in this young legislative year 
that this House has attempted to amend the Constitution of the United 
States, and the Senate has attempted to amend the Constitution once 
themselves. That was a balanced budget amendment that the other body 
had taken up.
  It would appear to me that this amendment is anathema to a balanced 
budget amendment. It requires a supermajority to raise taxes, but it 
does not require a supermajority to spend money. So we go back really 
to policies of the 1980's that took this country from about a $1 
trillion debt to over a $4 trillion debt. It is OK that we continue to 
spend, but we are not going to raise the taxes to pay for it.
  The other problem that I have is we have this debate on the floor of 
the House and across this country that my friends who are amending the 
Constitution call themselves conservatives, say that these are 
conservative principles. I do not think that rewriting the Constitution 
of the United States every time that there is a problem is truly 
something that is conservative. Our Founding Fathers did adopt a very 
simple principle. They wrote the Constitution. They said that this 
national government should operate through a majority rule. There are 
special times when we have a supermajority, and the gentlemen and 
gentlewomen from both sides of the aisle have talked about what those 
times are. But just raising taxes, I do not think, was intended to be 
one of them.
  Finally, I really think that there is a lot of gall bringing this 
amendment to the floor today. Not only did our friends in the majority 
waive this piece of the House rules several times when it was 
convenient during the last Congress, which I thought brought hypocrisy 
to new heights, now they are ignoring another April 15 deadline. You 
see, today is not only tax day in this Nation, it is a day when by law, 
April 15, Congress is to have approved a budget.
  My question is, where is the Republican budget? It has been nowhere 
in sight. We have meandered all over the place, we have been a 
rudderless ship here in the House of Representatives in this 105th 
Congress. Yet we are attempting again for the third time in the 105th 
Congress to rewrite the Constitution of the United States.
  Mr. CANADY of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the 
gentleman from Arkansas [Mr. Hutchinson].
  Mr. HUTCHINSON. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Florida for 
yielding me this time. I appreciate this opportunity, Mr. Speaker, to 
address a very important issue that faces our country today.
  Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of the tax limitation amendment. I do 
believe, as some of my Democrat colleagues have suggested, that you 
should be careful about amending the Constitution. I do not believe 
that it should be a knee-jerk reaction. I do not believe it should be 
at the drop of a hat or something that should be simple to do. It 
should be reserved for times of national difficulty, in areas in which 
the framing document of our country needs to be reworked. I believe 
that we have such a national problem today that justifies the tax 
limitation amendment. I offer three points for consideration.
  First, I do believe that we are overtaxed in our country. I think 
that is the underlying issue that we face as we address this proposed 
amendment. In Arkansas, the average taxpayer pays $7,000 in taxes. This 
might not be much money in Washington, DC, but in Arkansas it is almost 
one-third of a person's paycheck. I believe they need relief, I believe 
that they are overtaxed.
  The Tax Freedom Foundation says that we work until May 9 to pay our 
taxes. I believe that is long enough and yet it goes longer each year. 
I believe there is a point that you can reach in society at which 
government takes too much and confiscates too much of your work, and I 
believe we are at this point.
  In 1913, the people adopted the amendment to the Constitution that 
allowed the income tax. But there is no restriction on the majority 
vote that is needed to adopt new taxes. Since then, we have been 
overtaxed. And so I believe Congress needs to have the discipline to 
prevent it from raising taxes so frequently and from providing for an 
ever-expanding Federal Government. This amendment makes it more 
difficult to vote for tax increases, and it puts a restraint on 
spending.
  I believe, also, that it works well in the States. We consider the 
States the laboratory of democracy, where experiments are done. In 
Arkansas, there is a tax limitation proposal. It makes it more 
difficult to raise taxes. It puts a supermajority requirement on 
raising the income tax. It has worked well in Arkansas, it has worked 
well in other States, and so I believe that it is appropriate.
  Mr. Speaker, we need this amendment to restore confidence to the 
common man in America. They have lost confidence because promises have 
been made and promises have not been kept. This will make it more 
difficult to raise taxes. It is needed to restore faith in our 
democracy, in our institutions. For that reason, I support the 
resolution.

                              {time}  1730

  Mr. CANADY of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the 
gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Manzullo].
  (Mr. MANZULLO asked and was given permission to revise and extend his 
remarks.)
  Mr. MANZULLO. Mr. Speaker, there is a person who has been forgotten 
about in this entire debate over our constitutional amendment to curb 
the powers of the U.S. Congress to raise taxes. It is the person who 
gets up every day at the crack of dawn, packs the kids' lunch, gets the 
kids off to school, and he walks out the door with his lunch bucket, 
and oftentimes his wife will go to work also, and they work long hours, 
and they come back home, help the kids with the homework, and sit down 
on a Friday night, begin to write some checks and realize that they are 
working harder than ever in their entire lives and taking home less 
money.
  The reason for that is government is too big, it is too pervasive. 
The Federal Government has over 10,000 programs, and according to a 
chapter called generational forecasts that appears in most of our 
annual budgets, by the time their child who was born after 1993 goes 
into the work force, that child will pay in State, local, and Federal 
taxes between 84 and 94 percent of his or her income in taxes.
  We have a crisis on our hands before, and that is that some morning 
when these Americans get up to go to work they are going to turn on the 
television set and find out that the dollar has been so devaluated that 
their pension plans are worthless, that the economy is going to 
collapse because of the tremendous effect of the debt that $5.3

[[Page H1498]]

trillion has on this Nation. They are the ones who have been left out 
of this debate.
  The man who wrote my office earning $1,000 a month, not married, no 
children, paid over close to $900 a year in Federal income taxes. He is 
paying too much money because the U.S. Congress-- it is too easy here 
in this body to raise taxes and to strap the American people with the 
onerous debt that we are passing along to this generation and to the 
one coming after it.
  That is why we need, we need the shackles of a constitutional 
amendment, as Jefferson said. This body has to be restrained in the 
incredible spending that is going on and how easy it is to save one 
more tax, one more 4.3 cents tax per gallon of gasoline to fuel one 
more program, one more investment, and I ask this U.S. Congress to take 
into consideration those people who are making this country, those who 
get up at the crack of dawn, those who every day go to work and those 
who see their money wasted in so many programs, and they are saying to 
the U.S. Congress today, on tax day, today when they have to write 
their checks, ``We are demanding you to be responsible so that you can 
pass on to our generation a legacy other than $5.3 trillion in debt.''
  Mr. SCOTT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 10 minutes to the gentleman from 
Michigan [Mr. Conyers].
  (Mr. CONYERS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his 
remarks.)
  Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Speaker, I assure the gentleman from New York [Mr. 
Rangel] I will not use 10 minutes, but to my distinguished colleague 
about to leave the floor that just was the previous speaker: I am one 
of those guys that get up at the crack of dawn and work hard for a 
living, and on behalf of a lot of them I want to tell my colleague that 
as bad as we want to balance the budget, we would like it to be done 
with the majority of the 435 Members from the several States making the 
decision as to how we do it as opposed to a supermajority. That poses, 
I think to ordinary Americans, a very serious problem because it does a 
jujitsu on the democratic process and allows a minority to control the 
majority.
  So on behalf of those Americans who do work, who do get up at the 
crack of dawn, but still want majority rule, I would respectfully 
disagree with my colleague.
  Now I would also like to bring to my colleague's attention the 
statement of Warren Rudman; my colleagues know who he is; Sam Nunn, and 
they have all pointed out, and these are the bipartisan national 
balanced budgeters of the Nation, the Concord Coalition Committee. They 
ask us not to do what it is they are trying to do. They want to balance 
the budget, but they say in the first sentence: ``We urge you to vote 
against this resolution, a constitutional amendment, because it would 
be detrimental to the budget process.''
  So in considering how to balance the Federal budget and keep it 
balanced over the long term, all options for reducing spending or 
raising revenues must be kept on the table. No area of the budget on 
either the spending or revenue side should receive preferential 
treatment such as requiring supermajority votes.
  Now do my colleagues understand that? And if they do, what is their 
argument against it?
  Mr. Rudman goes on:

       In the current drive to balance the budget by the year 2002 
     the prevailing consensus is that the deficit should be 
     eliminated by reducing spending. There is no sentiment for 
     raising taxes as there was in 1993. Thus the proposed 
     amendment seems to be fighting the last battle rather than 
     focusing on the task at hand and taking a long view into the 
     future.

  And so I want to bring that to the attention of my conservative 
friends, that they are shooting themselves in the foot in their zeal to 
accomplish their goal in that they have friends trying to do this on 
this side of the aisle as well. So let us proceed in a rational manner. 
Why put this off into the Constitution, allowing judges to do our work?
  I presume everyone is serious and sober when they say they want to 
balance the budget. So why do we not start balancing the budget? The 
one way to start balancing the budget is to produce a budget for this 
fiscal year, and that has not been done.
  I noticed the Speaker has not given any explanation for why the 
budget is not being offered. As my colleagues know, the President , and 
this is elementary, but I want to say it any way: The President does 
not initiate the budget, the Congress does; and not just somebody in 
the Congress, the House; and not somebody in the House, the Committee 
on the Budget chair, appointed by the Speaker. And yet today, as the 
rhetoric escalates into the heavens about the need to balance the 
budget, we go into this fiscal year without a budget at all and none in 
sight.
  Now it would be appropriate to all of us, and especially me, is that 
I get some explanation, if not from the Speaker himself, but from the 
leadership of this body, the Republican leadership, what is going on 
here? They would balance the budget, a process that would take years, 
and yet their job of producing a budget by April 15 goes by without 
hardly a murmur. Can somebody tell me what is going on here? I mean 
what does this mean?
  So I have to propose my own solutions as best I can, and I offer to 
stand to be corrected. The budget for this fiscal year due today is not 
being offered because some of the Members on their side want as much as 
a 30-percent tax cut.
  I remember the distinguished gentleman from Kansas, Mr. Dole, the 
late and present Mr. Dole; he said he wanted a 30-percent tax cut, and 
I think that may create a little difference in the ranks as to how we 
proceed, but I do not think we should obfuscate that difference by 
amending the Constitution or pretending to attempt to do that.
  And then there is the problem of Medicare, is there not? Medicare 
would have to be cut if they revealed your budget. And guess what? The 
Contract with America is kind of under a very heated examination right 
now. The scrutiny is intense; is it not? And as much as we have heard, 
and I think almost every day that we have been in session one of my 
distinguished conservative Members of the body has articulated that 
Medicare will never be touched. But if they reveal their budget, and 
when they do, Medicare I think will be touched, and maybe that is a 
reason that we are dealing with a constitutional amendment that will 
kick in in the next millennium rather than what you should be doing and 
should have been doing in the calendar year 1997.
  Have a heart. Stop kidding the American people. They can take it. 
They can take it on the chin. If you got to cut programs, and you think 
it is in the national interest, that is what you are here for. We make 
the laws. The law is what we say it is, the Supreme Court permitting.
  But let us be honest about it. Are you punting this afternoon? I 
mean, let us go through the constitutional process. How many States, 
how many years, who will be here even if it were to become actual? 
Well, the answer is most of the self-imposed term limiters will not be 
here. A few more will have met their fate at the hands of their 
constituency when they really understand that the contract was on them 
and not with them.
  So I just ask for as much candor as we can muster in our debate on 
this very crucial subject, and I would urge anybody that is not yet 
settled in their mind what they are going to do on this resolution, 
vote against it.
  Mr. Speaker, thank the gentleman from Virginia [Mr. Scott] who has 
done a magnificent job of leading the debate on our side.
  Mr. CANADY of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman 
from Ohio [Mr. Boehner].
  Mr. BOEHNER. Mr. Speaker, there is no mystery why we pay taxes in the 
spring and we vote in the fall, and it is because Washington wants to 
give the American people as long as possible to forget how high their 
taxes are before they vote. It is because Washington does not want to 
have to explain to people why it takes so much of their income and 
gives so little. It is because Washington does not want to be held 
accountable for its big wasteful bureaucracies, its bloated programs 
and never ending growth, and it is because Washington does not want 
people to notice that their taxes keep going up to pay for this 
bureaucracy and to keep paying for this waste.

                              {time}  1745

  Mr. Speaker, we are going to do something about that today. We are

[[Page H1499]]

going to vote on a constitutional amendment to make it harder for 
Washington to raise taxes on the American people.
  Just within the last 7 years, a Democrat-controlled Congress hit 
working Americans with two of the biggest tax increases in our 
country's history. Today we say, no more.
  The typical family today currently pays in taxes about as much as it 
cost them for clothing, food, and housing all put together. And the 
typical worker today gives everything they earn from New Year's to May 
9 just to pay taxes. That is too much, and it has to stop. Today we 
ought to vote for this constitutional amendment to require a two-thirds 
vote in this House.
  Mr. CANADY of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the 
gentleman from Texas [Mr. Paul].
  Mr. PAUL. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this 
time.
  Mr. Speaker, I would like to first compliment the gentleman from 
Texas [Mr. Barton] for having brought this to the House floor. I think 
it is a wonderful opportunity for us to discuss a very important issue 
and also to make a proposal to do some good around here.
  Limiting taxes happens to be an issue that is dear to my heart and 
something I want to talk about. I have a philosophy about taxes. One is 
that taxes really hurt us twice, once when we take the money from the 
people, then when we go and spend it. So rarely do we spend the money 
wisely, but the people always seem to be hurt.
  I have yet in my many years experience in political life had anybody 
come up to me and say, go to Washington and raise taxes. Everybody 
feels that they are overtaxed. Anything that we could do to limit taxes 
I think would be beneficial.
  Whether or not this amendment will solve all of our problems is 
another issue. Quite frankly, it is not going to solve all of our 
problems. We have seen a proposal floating around for several years 
about balancing the budget. I am not enthusiastic about the balanced 
budget amendment precisely because that amendment, in itself, does not 
preclude what this amendment does, and that is raising taxes in order 
to balance the budget. That would be very, very detrimental.
  The important issue that we have to deal with is the level of 
government expenditures. If we have a balanced budget at $2 trillion a 
year, that is very detrimental. If we have an unbalanced budget at $1 
trillion a year, at least the American people would have more of their 
own money to spend.
  This is an effort to move in the direction of limiting taxes, and I 
think this is very, very important. There are a lot of things, though, 
that are out of our control. For instance, a small tax increase is not 
going to be included here. If we change the Tax Code and change 
indexing, taxes will go up, and this will not be included.
  Another tax that is not talked about much around here, but I consider 
it a very important tax, and that is the inflation tax. If we in the 
Congress spend too much, we do not have enough revenues, we can send 
the bill to the Federal Reserve. The Federal Reserve creates credit, 
and therefore diluting the value of our money, and the people suffer 
because their cost of living goes up. So that indeed is a tax.
  We do not have a whole lot of choices on how we accommodate our 
spending habits here. First, we can tax people; second, we can borrow; 
and the other is, we can inflate. All of these are detrimental. The 
important issue is to limit government spending.
  We will not solve any of our problems here until we address the 
serious subject of what should the role of government be. If we 
continue to believe that the role of government should be to perpetuate 
a bankrupt welfare state and to police the world and tell people how to 
live their personal lives, quite frankly, we are not going to get 
anywhere in solving our problems. We cannot patch this together.
  Collecting more revenues would be detrimental. Collecting less 
revenues would put more pressure on us to spend less money. But then 
again, it is not going to deal with the subject of interest rates.
  What happens if this year the interest rates go up 1 percent? Which 
they may, because interest rates are rising once again. And if interest 
rates go up 1 percent, it adds $50 billion to our interest payment on 
our national debt. That is out of our direct control here in the House 
or in the Senate. We cannot take care of that just by passing another 
law or raising taxes.
  Also, we do not have control of the business cycle. We should have 
much better control, because we understand and should understand the 
business cycle and we should prevent the downturns. But sure enough, 
there will be another recession, entitlement payments will 
automatically go up, put more pressure on us with the deficit, and also 
put more pressure on those who would like to say, well, if the spending 
is going up, we have to take care of the people, and what we need to do 
is raise taxes. The easier, the better. A very, very dangerous 
situation when it is easy to raise taxes. The Founders of this country 
in no way intended that taxes on income should ever occur, let alone be 
done easily.
  So this is a small effort in the right direction. I ask for a yea 
vote on this amendment.
  Mr. CANADY of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the 
gentlewoman from Florida [Mrs. Fowler].
  (Mrs. FOWLER asked and was given permission to revise and extend her 
remarks.)
  Mrs. FOWLER. Mr. Speaker, there is an old joke that asks the 
question: What is the difference between death and taxes? And the 
answer to that question: Death does not get worse every time Congress 
comes to town.
  Hopefully, today we are going to take a big step toward making that 
joke obsolete by passing House Joint Resolution 62.
  The evidence is already there that making it harder to raise taxes 
actually benefits government as well as individuals. In States that 
have adopted provisions similar to the amendment we are voting on 
today, taxes have increased more slowly, spending has grown more 
slowly, economies have expanded faster, and employment has grown more 
quickly.
  Mr. Speaker, we are already working to balance the budget, decrease 
the size and scope of the Federal Government, and reduce spending. Let 
us also follow the good example of the States by passing this 
amendment.
  Mr. CANADY of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the 
gentleman from Florida [Mr. Shaw].
  Mr. SHAW. Mr. Speaker, on this day, April 15, I am most reluctant to 
get up and speak against an amendment which, on its face, appears to be 
something that we all should support. However, I think it is an 
amendment that we should not be putting into the Constitution of the 
United States.
  The bill before us today does not in any way give the American people 
any tax relief. What it simply would do is to institutionalize into the 
U.S. Constitution a provision, an antidemocrat provision, and I do not 
mean Democrat party, I mean one having to do with democracy; a 
provision that would say that the minority can run this House. Think 
about it for a moment. Under this constitutional amendment, 7 percent 
of the population, through a vote in the Senate, could run the business 
of the legislative body of this great country of ours.
  When this came to the floor last time, I voted for it. Since then, I 
have been giving it a great deal of thought, and that thought has been 
somewhat around my support of the constitutional amendment that would 
require us to balance our budget.
  Mr. Speaker, we should think for a moment when we have a situation 
where we are putting into the Constitution a provision where 7 percent 
of the population of this great country can stop legislation. We will 
have put into position in the Constitution a constitutional amendment 
that requires the Federal Government to balance its budget, and then we 
try to put a tax bill on the floor when funds may be desperately 
needed, not in a time of hostility, but perhaps just needed in order to 
build up our own forces to compete with a force that is potentially 
hostile elsewhere in this world.
  As a leader of the free world and as a leader of this entire world, 
this country could be brought to its knees by 7 percent of the 
population. That is absolutely unthinkable to me.
  As much as I hate to vote against this amendment, and as much respect 
as I have for the proponents of this amendment and what they are trying

[[Page H1500]]

to do, and as much as I support them in the efforts of what they are 
trying to do, this is not the responsible way for this great body to 
go.
  It is time that we as Republicans get away from the minority 
mentality that we seem to be carrying with us in this House. We control 
this House. We are the party of lower taxes, and as long as we can 
control this House, we will remain the party of lower taxes, and we 
will not increase the taxes on the American people.
  Let us have faith in ourselves; let us have faith in our own party; 
let us have faith in our willingness and our resolve not to raise taxes 
on the American people. That is where the vote should be. That is where 
the limitation should be, at the ballot box, where the American people 
elect their representatives to send to this Congress.
  Mr. CANADY of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I yield such time as she may 
consume to the gentlewoman from New Jersey [Mrs. Roukema].
  (Mrs. ROUKEMA asked and was given permission to revise and extend her 
remarks.)
  Mrs. ROUKEMA. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to this amendment and 
I would like to associate myself with the remarks of the gentleman from 
Florida [Mr. Shaw].
  Mr. Speaker, Representative Shaw is right.
  In search of a sure-fire method to address the grim fiscal realities 
of high taxes and deficit spending in America in 1997, we have come up 
with House Joint Resolution 62, the so-called tax limitation amendment. 
However, once again, we are threatening to approve an amendment to our 
Constitution that would shred the very constitutional fabric of our 
representational form of government.
  We have before us a proposed constitutional amendment that would 
require a two-thirds vote of the House and the Senate to increase net 
Government revenues by more than a de minimis amount. Ignoring the 
obvious ambiguity of this language, this proposed amendment raises the 
specter of the tyranny of the minority--that one-third of either 
Chamber can, in effect, hold the vast majority hostage.
  I, too, am former history and government teacher and I have a healthy 
respect for the principle of majority rule. The Framers of the 
Constitution debated this issue at length before enshrining majority 
rule as its foundation. Since then, our Constitution, the model for 
emerging democracies around the globe, has served us very well. I 
cannot believe that our current wisdom exceeds that of the Founding 
Fathers.
  Let us be clear. This amendment institutionalizes minority rule in 
the area of tax law. It means that Representatives elected by one-third 
of the U.S. population, or Senators representing less than 10 percent 
of the U.S. population, could block tax policy that may be supported by 
a vast majority of the American people.
  The American people are justifiably sick and tired of what they see 
as political gamesmanship, bickering, and gridlock in Washington. My 
colleagues, if the American people are frustrated now, they should just 
wait to measure the effects of this amendment. This amendment is 
practically a guarantee of legislative paralysis with the potential for 
devastating damage to our economy.
  Mr. Speaker, Americans know that the future of their children and 
their grandchildren is threatened by a growing mountain of debt. But 
our problem is not taxing. Our problem is spending.
  What we are doing here this afternoon is trying to legislate 
political courage. Unfortunately, a host of legislative measures over 
the years designed to reduce our dangerous budget deficit have failed. 
We now spend 25 cents of every $1 just to pay interest on the national 
debt. Under these circumstances, it is no wonder we are losing our edge 
in a very competitive global economy.
  Once again, as was the case with the line-item veto, we have properly 
identified the problem, but have developed the wrong solution. This 
two-thirds tax amendment is wrong.
  What we should be doing today is voting to cut spending, downsize 
Government, and promote a save and invest in America tax program that 
will allow us to create good jobs at good wages.
  We must reform our spending and tax policies for sure. However, 
violating the fundamental foundations of our democracy is not 
salvation. It is apostacy and a serious erosion of our democracy--of 
the people, by the people, for the people.
  Let's not violate majority rule, the foundation of our noble 
democracy.
  Mr. CANADY of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the 
gentleman from Pennsylvania [Mr. Fox].
  Mr. FOX of Pennsylvania. Mr. Speaker, I first want to take this 
opportunity to thank the gentleman from Texas [Mr. Barton] for having 
the leadership to bring this legislation to the House floor today and 
for his steadfast efforts of making sure that the House has an 
opportunity to move forward with this positive legislation.
  The tax limitation amendment is modeled after State constitutions 
which require a supermajority, Mr. Speaker, a vote of their 
legislatures in order to pass increases, a House amendment that would 
require a two-thirds majority in both the House and the Senate to raise 
taxes. This is a bipartisan measure which has wide support in both 
Chambers.
  Mr. Speaker, I would point out that four of the last five major tax 
increases were passed by less than a two-thirds majority. Those bills 
raised taxes on Americans by $666 billion.
  From 1980 to 1987, taxpayers in States with tax limitations in their 
State law enjoyed a 2-percent decrease in personal income paid in 
taxes.
  Consider these facts also, Mr. Speaker: Families paid just 5 percent 
of income in Federal taxes in 1950, and yet today the average Federal 
taxpaying family pays 24 percent of its annual income in taxes.
  What could they do with that extra money for education? What could 
they do with that extra money to take care of their mortgage? What 
could they do with that extra money in their pockets to take care of 
health care needs?
  I do not believe in money sent to Washington to duplicate State 
programs and to also duplicate local programs as an intelligent way to 
spend money. Tax limitations work in the States; Eleven States have now 
adopted tax limitations. In tax limitation States, taxes have grown 
more slowly, spending has grown more slowly, economies have expanded 
faster, and the job base, Mr. Speaker, has also grown more quickly. The 
Federal Government and the national economy could get the same kind of 
benefits with the adoption of the Barton legislation.
  The success of tax limitation has also encouraged new States to put 
limits in their State constitutions. Americans clearly want Federal tax 
limitation too. Recent surveys show that 70 percent feel that way, and 
I would ask that the body please, by an overwhelming majority, support 
the Barton legislation for tax limitation.
  Mr. SCOTT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 5\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from 
Virginia [Mr. Moran].
  Mr. MORAN of Virginia. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to this 
resolution to amend the United States Constitution to require a two-
thirds vote to raise Federal taxes. I think The Washington Post 
characterized it accurately today with their editorial entitled, ``A 
Show Vote On Tax Day.'' But the Constitution deserves better than to be 
used as a political proper.
  It is a simple idea, but I think voting for it, while it may give my 
colleagues some brownie points with some of the antigovernment tax 
groups, it invites dangerous consequences for the future of our economy 
and our democracy.

                              {time}  1800

  The House leadership sought to avoid a discussion of the serious 
consequences that this could effect by bypassing the regular committee 
process with hearings and the kind of extensive public debate that it 
merited. The resolution fails to define what the term ``de minimis'' 
means in this legislation.
  Quickly, sure, the gentleman is going to tell me that there was some 
committee discussion of it.
  Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. MORAN of Virginia. I yield to the gentleman from Texas.
  Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, we followed absolute regular order 
this year. We did not bypass the subcommittee, we did not bypass the 
full committee, we did not bypass the Committee on Rules. We allowed 
any Member who wanted to to testify, and when it was before the 
subcommittee, those in opposition, at least the Members in opposition, 
chose not to appear and testify.
  Mr. MORAN of Virginia. I understand that.
  Mr. Speaker, I think the gentleman would agree that, relative to 
other votes of consequence, there was a minimal amount of debate within 
the committee itself. Normally you go for several weeks, bringing in 
all the interest

[[Page H1501]]

groups that are involved in this and have given it study. But that is 
not my main point anyway. I do not want to debate the gentleman at 
length. I appreciate the gentleman's point of view on it.
  Mr. Speaker, I think that with ratification of this amendment, anyone 
who objects to any tax policy change could have their day in court. Any 
changes that broaden the tax base, that close corporate loopholes, that 
overhaul our tax system, be it the majority leader's call for a new 
flat tax, the chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means' interest in 
the national sales tax, but even something far less radical like a 
capital gains tax cut, could be contested in court.
  The resolution will prove unworkable. As the House leadership has 
already found with their once-celebrated tenet of the Contract With 
America, a meaningless rule change that required a three-fifths vote 
for tax legislation had to be waived by the Committee on Rules each 
time we took up any kind of tax bill before this body. It violates the 
spirit of majority rule and will take us back to the very problems our 
Founding Fathers experienced under the Articles of Confederation.
  I hope some of my colleagues will listen to this, because our 
Founding Fathers did in fact require that 9 out of the 13 States 
ascertain the sums and expenses necessary for the States to raise 
revenue. In other words, they had this requirement originally in the 
Articles of Confederation. It did not work. They found that this 
supermajority was too much, that there were not two-thirds of the 
Members who had the courage to do what they felt was necessary to make 
this country survive. So in 1787, at the Constitutional Convention, our 
Founding Fathers recognized this defect. They established a national 
government that would impose and enforce laws and collect revenues 
through a simple majority rule.
  There is a lot of debate on this. I would like to also stress how 
unworkable the resolution will prove based upon the experience we had 
in the last Congress, where we required a three-fifths vote of approval 
for any tax increase that we passed. In one of the first actions at the 
beginning of the 104th Congress, the Congress modified clause 5(c) of 
rule XXI. It said that no bill or joint resolution, in other words, any 
action that carries a Federal income tax increase, will be considered 
as passed unless it gets three-fifths of the Members voting.
  Compliance with that rule lasted no longer than 3 months, the time it 
took to bring the Contract With America Tax Relief Act of 1995 to the 
floor of the House for a vote. It did not work.
  On April 5 of that year I came to this well and raised a point of 
order on a provision in that act that repealed section 1(h) affecting 
the maximum rate for long-term capital gains. It was a tax increase. In 
fact, subsequently, the Parliamentarian agreed with me. Mr. Speaker, 
five times when we have had tax bills before this body we violated the 
three-fifths requirement. There had to be a waiver of the rule.
  Now, at the beginning of this Congress, we made it easier to 
completely avoid that three-fifths requirement. What are we doing now, 
saying that we are going to have a constitutional amendment that 
requires two-thirds? We know it will not work. It did not work with the 
last Congress. I think we are playing with the Constitution and we are 
doing a disservice to the American people. I urge a no vote.
  Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the 
distinguished gentleman from Texas [Mr. DeLay], the majority whip.
  Mr. DeLAY. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of this constitutional 
amendment to make it more difficult to increase taxes on the American 
people. I want to thank the gentleman from Texas, Mr. Joe Barton, and 
everybody else who has worked on this bill for their tireless efforts 
to protect the taxpayers of this country.
  People might laugh when the Congress says stop us before we tax 
again. But I assure the Members, this is no laughing matter. The 
American family is taxed too much by a government that does too much to 
limit the freedom and responsibilities of the people.
  This is not only about keeping a lid on the taxes that the American 
people pay. It is about shrinking the size and the power of the Federal 
Government. Freedom works. Freedom sells. Freedom creates opportunities 
and provides all of us with a better quality of life. But our freedom 
is threatened when we spend our children's inheritances as we tax the 
estates of those who die.
  The Federal Government can do better if it does less. The American 
people will do better if they are allowed to do more. This amendment to 
the Constitution will lead to both results. I urge my colleagues to 
vote for this amendment.
  Mr. SCOTT. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from 
Illinois [Mr. Gutierrez].
  Mr. GUTIERREZ. Mr. Speaker, I have listened to some interesting 
discussion and debate here this afternoon about the justice of the tax 
system. I even heard one comment from the majority side that suggested 
that Federal income taxes have risen 25 percent over the last 4 years.
  I do not know who is doing the Members' taxes on that side of the 
aisle, but I assure them that it is not 25 percent. As Members of 
Congress, I think we should be serious about our discussion and our 
debate and not try to inflate figures or make up figures as we have a 
debate here.
  We have each earned the same salary for the last 4 years, or we have 
reported that same salary for the last 4 years. It has been $133,000. 
If Members have had the same children and the same home and the same 
exemptions, I do not see how Members paid 25 percent more in Federal 
income taxes. I would suggest that they check their accountants, and 
not blame it on the tax system. It just is not real. It is not 
happening.
  Mr. Speaker, I ask the American public, pull out your income taxes. 
If you have had the same number of children, lived in the same home, 
and have had basically the same salary, see if you got a 25-percent 
increase in Federal income taxes over the last 4 years. You can go and 
check. You should have the records, because the IRS does require us to 
keep them for the last 7 years. That is point No. 1.
  Point No. 2, but we see the demagoguery in many of these issues, 
because today is tax day. I just want to talk about a few people who 
not only play by the rules but pay by the rules.
  Much has been said. A recent CRS study says that 85 percent of those 
that are not citizens of the United States but are here legally in this 
country, guess what they did today, 85 percent of them? They filed 
Federal income taxes and paid them today. Moreover, you say, oh, but 
what about those who were born in this country? They are definitely 
more true blue and pay more Federal income taxes than those immigrants 
that came? Wrong, by 1 percent; 1 percent higher, those who were born 
in the United States to those who come here as immigrants, in terms of 
those who will file Federal income tax returns today. That is the CRS 
study that was just issued.
  No. 3, what was interesting was those today who filed a Federal 
income tax return, on average, if you have in your family somebody that 
was born not in the United States of America but became a naturalized 
citizen of the United States of America, he reported, on average, guess 
what, $5,000 more in earnings than the person that was born in the 
United States of America, on average, without an immigrant. It sounds 
to me like pretty good politics, to have somebody who comes to this 
country, contributes and works, and becomes an American citizen, to 
talk about immigrants being this drain on the economy.
  Last, I would like to suggest to everybody, the same study, guess 
what: Immigrants to the United States of America, that is, those that 
are here legally, under color of law, pay $70 billion. Yes, that is 
right, they pay $70 billion in taxes. Yet, they use $13 billion in that 
terrible, nasty welfare system. Sounds like a real good deal to me.
  Let us stop the demagoguery. Let us get on with the truth.
  Mr. CANADY of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the 
gentleman from California [Mr. Royce].
  Mr. ROYCE. Mr. Speaker, if we went back two generations ago, we would 
find that American families paid 5 percent of their income in income 
taxes; and if we went back one generation ago, we would find it was 10 
percent. And now we find today that it is about 20 percent. And that is 
just income tax.

[[Page H1502]]

  If we add on the State taxes, if we add on all the indirect taxes, we 
find that more is being spent on these taxes than if we add up clothing 
and food and housing combined.
  If we look at the States that have tried to put tax limitation to 
work, 14 States have done it, it works there. Taxes grow more slowly, 
spending grows more slowly in those States, the economies expand 
faster.
  That is what is important to me, the economies expand faster when 
they are limited as to taxation, the job base grows more quickly. The 
Federal Government and the National economy, I argue, should get the 
same benefits.
  Now, the House of Representatives is already on record for tax 
limitation. The House rules here require a supermajority vote for 
income tax increases, but this rule only covers this House, it does not 
cover the next Congress.
  If we go back to that vote that put those rules on this House, it was 
279 to 152. Now, that is just 9 votes short in the 104th Congress of 
what we would need for a supermajority.
  Tax limitation is necessary because of the current bias in the 
Federal Government toward tax increases. Most Government benefits 
benefit distinct special interests. These groups have strong economic 
interest in banding together to lobby for additional increases in 
spending.
  Taxpayers, however, are spread evenly throughout the country and find 
it difficult and uneconomical to band together to lobby to stop any 
particular tax increase. The inherent bias toward tax increases can be 
balanced by this amendment requiring a two-thirds provision of this 
House to increase taxes.
  And I will close by pointing out that the Tax Limitation Amendment 
would have stopped the 1993 Clinton increase, which was the largest tax 
in U.S. history. The $275 billion in new taxes passed by only one vote 
in both the House and by one vote in the Senate.
  If a supermajority requirement for tax increases had been in effect 
then, the tax increases would have been much smaller or never passed at 
all.
  Mr. CANADY of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the 
gentleman from New Jersey [Mr. Saxton].
  (Mr. SAXTON asked and was given permission to revise and extend his 
remarks.)
  Mr. SAXTON. Mr. Speaker, there has been a lot said here today, but 
when the gentleman from Texas [Mr. DeLay], came to the well and spoke 
about freedom, it really did ring a bell that I think rings very true.
  Our country was founded 220 years ago, and it was the anticipation of 
the Founding Fathers that we would have a relatively small and 
inexpensive Government that was initially funded by tariffs. And as a 
matter of fact, there was not an income tax until I believe it was 1922 
or right thereabouts.
  And so, over the years, as it became necessary in the judgment of 
Members that served in this House and the other body to take on more 
responsibility, it became necessary to find more funding to do that. 
And with each additional percentage that we asked the American people 
to send here, they lost part of their economic freedom.
  Imagine going from a brand new country with no taxes, no domestic 
taxes, to a country today where Government consumes very close to 40 
percent of our GDP. Forty percent of what the American people earn is 
sent to Washington, DC, and the State governments and the local 
governments around the country.
  So today they have only 60 percent of their income to dispose of, 
where the freedom that they had in terms of the economies of families 
and how they spent their money, the freedom they had was 100 percent. 
Today, the American people have a diminished economic freedom that 
amounts to 60 percent on average of what they earn.

                              {time}  1815

  Freedom is very important to us. Economic freedom is very important 
to us. I think, to Members of both sides of the aisle, we all agree on 
that. Yet in 1990 we voted for a big tax increase; I did not, but the 
majority here did. In 1993, Mr. Speaker, we voted for another big tax 
increase, and in both cases we eroded the economic freedom of the 
American people.
  I happen to be an active member, in fact the chairman of the Joint 
Economic Committee. Our function, as my colleagues know, is not to 
handle legislation but to study what we do here to see what kind of an 
effect it has on the American economy and the American family and the 
American people and the freedom they have in an economic sense to 
progress and work hard and to have their families get ahead.
  One of the studies we did shows clearly that, once the Federal 
Government begins to consume more than about 18 percent of GDP, it 
begins to act as a wet blanket on the economy generally. So there are 
fewer jobs, pay scales get stagnated as they are today when wages are 
not going up, and so once again we find that we lose the economic 
freedom when the Government gets too big and too expensive, when today 
we consume a full 23 percent of gross domestic product, instead of the 
18 percent which many of us think is about the optimum level, a full 5 
percentage points above what we ought to.
  Now, what this amendment to the Constitution is about is to preserve 
the economic freedom that the American people deserve and expect and 
work hard to achieve. Yes, we can make a decision here collectively 
about how to spend their money. But they would much rather make 
decisions within their family structures or as individuals about how 
they spend their money, how we spend our money back home.
  So I think it is incumbent upon us to recognize these basic, very 
basic elements of freedom as they apply to our economy and our work 
force and all of the things to go with it.
  One of my good friends just a few minutes ago talked about 7 percent 
of the people of the country, and I am not quite sure how that works 
out, but 7 percent of the people making decisions for the rest of us or 
keeping us from doing the things that we might, 93 percent of us 
presumably want to do. I would suggest this amendment goes in just the 
opposite direction because all it does, Mr. Speaker, is to set the 
stage for a national debate that will take place in the States. All 50 
States have the opportunity to debate what our rules here should be by 
which we enact economic freedom legislation or the lack thereof.
  Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, may I inquire as to how much time 
remains on each side?
  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Solomon). The gentleman from Texas [Mr. 
Barton] has 13\1/2\ minutes remaining, the gentleman from Florida [Mr. 
Canady] has 1 minute remaining, and the gentleman from Virginia [Mr. 
Scott] has 7 minutes remaining.
  Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the 
distinguished gentleman from Illinois [Mr. Shimkus].
  (Mr. SHIMKUS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his 
remarks.)
  Mr. SHIMKUS. Mr. Speaker, as a former U.S. history teacher, I taught 
that the U.S. Constitution was a living document, let it live. This 
debate is about the Federal Government's ability to raise taxes. It 
should be very hard to do and it should not be easy. As a new Member, 
one of my great privileges is to run on an issue, be able to cosponsor 
an issue, work for its passage and eventually vote on its passage. The 
people in my district want this amendment to make it harder to raise 
taxes. It is time to match political will with political strength. Let 
us pass this amendment.
  Mr. SCOTT. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 1 minute.
  Mr. Speaker, this constitutional amendment diverts attention from the 
fact that today with the deadline for congressional action on the 
budget, and there was no budget, we have talked about debt; this 
amendment is a recipe for disaster. We can continue to spend with a 
simple majority but a two-thirds vote to pay for it. That is a recipe 
for more debt.
  Finally, Mr. Speaker, if we passed a loophole for corporations that 
we thought was going to be $500 million and it was a mistake and was 
actually a $5 billion loophole, we would have to take a two-thirds 
majority to close that loophole or, if we cannot get the two-thirds and 
we are trying to balance the budget, we would have to cut education, 
Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare to pay for that mistake, because 
that loophole is protected.
  Mr. Speaker, we ought to call this the loophole protection act rather 
than something else. This constitutional

[[Page H1503]]

amendment is not fair and it should be rejected.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield the balance of my time to the gentleman from New 
York [Mr. Rangel], ranking member of the Committee on Ways and Means.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from New York [Mr. Rangel] is 
recognized for 6 minutes.
  (Mr. RANGEL asked and was given permission to revise and extend his 
remarks.)
  Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Speaker, I took advantage of the opportunity to go to 
the Hershey retreat in an effort to see whether or not we could get 
along better than we have since the majority was gained by the 
Republicans. I thought it was very useful. In that light, I view this 
constitutional amendment, one that should have really been brought to 
the floor on April 1 rather than April 15, I assume that this is a 
jocular type of thing that is being done to allow the American people 
to believe that the majority is not everything that they think it 
should be.
  It seems to me, if there was any sensitivity about reducing taxes and 
cutting spending, that after I reviewed the Contract With America, it 
said that the rules of the House are not changed, that majority ruled. 
This was a point that my dear friend, the gentleman from Florida [Mr. 
Shaw], was making who serves on the tax writing committee.
  It may be interesting to note that some of us that have been assigned 
to this committee, which is the constitutional committee to raise the 
revenue for the United States of America, not the other body, have 
refrained from speaking on the floor in favor of this type of thing 
because we respect the membership to do what the voters want.
  To me it would make a lot of sense if we had a Contract With America 
and we said we were reducing taxes by $300 billion, the first thing we 
would do is count the amount of votes that we have. And there sure are 
more Republicans than there are Democrats. It seems to me that, when 
the Speaker of the majority of this House says that he wants to 
eliminate inheritance taxes for the wealthy and just eliminate all of 
capital gains taxes, the staff estimates it costs $450 billion. But I 
am a minority, my colleagues are the majority. I am on the committee. I 
do not see any bill to reduce taxes by $450 billion. I have not seen a 
bill coming from the majority since I have been on the committee.
  I remember when the candidate for President, he upped the ante $500 
billion. But in my committee, what we were doing is having hearings on 
ripping up the entire tax system. So if the chairman of my committee is 
having hearings on pulling the tax system up by its roots and the 
candidate for President is interested in using the same system but 
decreasing taxes for $500 billion, for God's sake, before we ask the 
courts to decide our tax policy, can we not get along? Can the majority 
kind of tell us, what is it that they want that they cannot get with 
the majority of the vote? Why give up and throw up our hands and say, 
we have got to make it impossible for us to be able to raise taxes 
because we need two-thirds. We cannot get a majority on anything.
  So if we just want to take away the House's ability and 
constitutional right to assume this responsibility, why do we not at 
least try the other side? They have got bills over there now. They say 
they are going, they do not have the constitutional right to get it 
over here, I mean to enact it over there, but it still has to come 
here. Why do they not tell us with the 450 billion cuts, how are we 
going to pay for it?
  We all started out with the Republican leadership in reducing the 
budget. I really think that the President went along with everything 
when he indicated that he would do it in 7 years because it seemed like 
a great figure to me, so the Speaker said he thought it was a nice 
number. So he adopted the nice number.
  Now how are we going to get the $450 billion tax cut that the other 
side, at least they have a bill, unless we know how we are going to pay 
for it? Have we given up on deficit reductions? Or is this something 
that really comes up every April 15 where we can tell the American 
people that we are going to reduce taxes?
  If I was partisan, and since the retreat I am not, I would think that 
the American people would think there is some kind of hoodwinking going 
on here. How year after year after year you are saying we are paying 
too much taxes and it should be reduced by half a trillion dollars and 
you cannot get a bill together to reduce it by $1. You cannot come 
together with anything. That is a challenge that comes from our side of 
the aisle.
  The way this system is supposed to work is the President proposes we 
dispose. So we are in a minority. We do not have a bill yet. We are 
waiting for the majority to come up with something to tell the 
President, we do not like what you have done. We have got a plan.
  The last plan you had, the Contract With America, was very 
politically successful, and that is to adopt President Clinton's 
proposal that you rejected. And ever since then you have said that you 
can enjoy bipartisanship since you lost your candidate on the way to 
the polls.
  But that is behind us. Now is the time for us to work together to see 
what can we do in the House of Representatives. If what you are saying 
is that having won the majority, having taken your contract to the 
people, that we now have to have a constitutional amendment and turn it 
over to the courts, you missed April fool's day by 2 weeks.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair would point out that the gentleman 
from Florida [Mr. Canady] has the right to close and has 1 minute 
remaining.
  The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Texas [Mr. Barton].
  Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I yield 6 minutes and 30 seconds to 
the gentleman from Arizona [Mr. Shadegg], who led the fight in the 
great State of Arizona to pass it at the State level.
  (Mr. SHADEGG asked and was given permission to revise and extend his 
remarks.)
  Mr. SHADEGG. Mr. Speaker, as the distinguished gentleman from Texas 
indicated, I did push this measure as an initiative in the State of 
Arizona, and it passed with the support of 72 percent of the voters. 
And like the other States which have adopted a measure of this nature, 
Arizona's economy has gotten dramatically stronger since we passed this 
measure.
  I rise in strong support of it, and before I get into my remarks, let 
me address one point raised on the other side. It was argued that this 
is a loophole protection act. Nothing could be further from the truth. 
This measure is simple and straightforward.
  Anyone identifying what they believe to be a loophole in our law, a 
corporate loophole favoring some taxpayer, can with a simple majority 
close that loophole provided that we return those taxes that were being 
extracted to the voters rather than keep them here in Washington.
  Mr. Speaker, this is a simple measure designed to make it slightly 
harder for the Federal Government and this U.S. Congress to raise your 
taxes yet one more time.
  Let us begin by looking at the tax increases we have faced in this 
Nation and the tax burden today. This chart on my left shows us that in 
1950, the Federal tax bite required that an average family with 
children send $1 to Washington for every $50 that it earned, $1 for 
every $50.
  By 1996, the chart demonstrates a dramatic change. That figure is not 
$1 in $50 sent to Washington, it is now $1 out of $4; earn $4, send 1 
of them to Washington, DC. That is a dramatic increase in the Federal 
tax bite.
  Indeed, Mr. Speaker, just since 1980, the tax bite, as this chart 
shows, has more than doubled on the average American taxpayer. In 1980, 
they paid slightly over $2,000 in taxes. By 1995, that figure was 
almost $5,000, a dramatic increase in the tax bite in just 15 years.
  Mr. Speaker, a famous Supreme Court Justice in the case of McCulloch 
versus Maryland, John Marshall, once wrote that the power to tax 
involves the power to destroy.

                              {time}  1830

  And indeed, Mr. Speaker, it does. It is close to destroying the 
economy of this Nation.
  That raises the question that some argue that what we need to do is 
raise

[[Page H1504]]

taxes to deal with the deficit facing this Nation. Let me point out 
that that is a false premise and that those who argue this measure will 
keep us from dealing with the deficit are absolutely wrong.
  The Joint Economic Committee did a study in April 1996, and it 
demonstrated that when we look at the tax increases this Congress has 
enacted in recent years, for every $1 in additional taxes imposed on 
the American public, we did not lower the deficit, we did not lower it 
by a dollar, we did not lower it by 50 cents; indeed, we raised the 
deficit. For each dollar in tax increase, we raised the deficit by 
$1.59, because we spent even more than we increased taxes.
  As a result of that situation, Mr. Speaker, along comes a reasonable 
proposal. And we have heard today that this is some sort of a radical 
motion, that it is not worthy of debate, that this is show or stage, or 
that this is not a substantive proposal. Mr. Speaker, let me point out, 
that is again false.
  Talk to the 80 million Americans, 80 million Americans who live in 
States that have already passed tax limitations. There are 14 States, 
as shown on this chart, that have already enacted tax limitations in 
their constitutions. They are listed here, Arizona at the top and 
Washington at the bottom. That covers almost a third of all Americans 
living in States which have chosen to pass a measure virtually 
identical to what we are trying to pass today.
  As we have heard this afternoon, the economies of those States are 
growing faster than the economies of States which do not have a 
supermajority requirement. I would point out that four of those States 
have enacted these tax limitation constitutional amendments within the 
last year. That is, since this last issue was debated on this floor 1 
year ago, in April 1996, four more States have chosen to pass a measure 
of this type.
  Now, some argue we should not have a supermajority requirement in the 
Constitution, that somehow that is thought to be antidemocratic. I 
suggest that it is not and that, indeed, as this chart indicates, in 
the original Constitution there were seven such supermajority 
requirements.
  Seven times the Founding Fathers said this issue is extraordinary 
enough that we ought to require a supermajority. Three of those require 
votes here on the floor: For expulsion of a Member, for override of a 
Presidential veto, or for proposing a constitutional amendment.
  Three additional amendments have been added to the Constitution which 
have also put in a supermajority requirement, each of them saying that 
for certain issues it is vitally important that we not have a simple 
majority but that we have a broad consensus of support.
  I would argue that today in America, with the tax bite having been 
increased to the degree it has been increased, with the power to tax 
equalling the power to destroy, it is time indeed to say that before we 
raise taxes on hard-working American families and businesses yet one 
more time, we say let us have a broad consensus, let us have two-thirds 
of this body agree that it needs to be done, and that is what we have 
done in each of these other instances. It is appropriate that we do 
that.
  Now, many people have come to the floor and spoken against this 
measure today and have articulated their views. I think the issue was 
well summed up by John Randolph. John Randolph served as a Member of 
this House of Representatives and later as a Member of the U.S. Senate, 
and he said a quote which I hope every American thinks about and I hope 
every one of our colleagues reflects upon, Mr. Speaker, and that is, he 
said,
       It has been said that one of the most delicious of all 
     privileges is that of spending other people's money.
  Mr. Speaker, this debate is about the right to spend other people's 
money.
  Let me just conclude by saying this is the fundamental issue right 
here on the floor, the delicious privilege of spending other people's 
money, and that is what we enjoy when we impose tax increases on the 
American people.
  Should we not say that that requires a broad consensus? Should we not 
say that given the other restrictions in the Constitution, which have 
been weakened over time, that now is the time to say that before we 
raise taxes on the American people one more time, before we do as we 
are doing tonight all across America and reaching into their wallets 
and taking more money out, that we have a supermajority to do that? I 
believe we should. I urge its adoption.
  Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my 
time.
  (Mr. BARTON of Texas asked and was given permission to revise and 
extend his remarks.)
  Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, first, I want to thank the 
gentleman from Virginia [Mr. Scott], and the gentleman from Florida 
[Mr. Canady] for their floor management of this time. They have both 
been gentlemen, and I think we have had a good debate.
  We need to get down to brass tacks now. In plain common language, 
what we are trying to do with this constitutional amendment is to make 
it more difficult to raise taxes.
  I have listened to the opponents very carefully this afternoon. I 
have yet to have any of the opponents say that the amendment would not 
accomplish its intended purpose; that is, if passed and put into the 
Constitution, it would make it more difficult to raise taxes.
  As Americans are scurrying around as we speak, trying to get their 
taxes done or that extension form filled out so they have the magic 
postmark of midnight, April 15, on their tax return, I think we owe it 
to them to do something substantively in the House of Representatives 
this afternoon, or this evening, to make it more difficult to raise 
their taxes.
  Now, we have pointed out earlier in this debate that in the 
Constitution, as adopted, there was a direct prohibition against any 
direct tax, a 100-percent prohibition. We could not have an income tax. 
The 16th amendment, passed in 1913, said we could have incomes taxes, 
and since that time the average tax rate on the American people has 
gone from zero income taxes to an average of 19 percent.
  Taxable income is $2.6 trillion out of $5.7 trillion personal income. 
American taxpayers will be sending to Uncle Sam tonight $520 billion, 
half a trillion dollars in Federal income taxes.
  We know that tax limitation works because we have 14 States that have 
passed some form of tax limitation. Four of those States have passed it 
in the last year, since this debate on the floor of the House last 
year. In those States, as has been pointed out repeatedly, taxes go up 
more slowly; State spending goes up more slowly; the economies grow 
faster; therefore, private jobs are created more quickly.
  How would the supermajority requirement work if it were to become the 
law of the land? It would say that an income tax increase, an estate 
and gift tax increase, an employment such as Social Security or 
Medicare tax increase, or an excise tax increase, such as the aviation 
tax, the gasoline tax, would require a two-thirds supermajority vote. 
Those are all taxes that are in the Internal Revenue Code of this 
country.

  If we wanted to do something with tariffs, user fees, voluntary part 
B Medicare premiums, or bills that do not change the Internal Revenue 
laws, we could do that without a supermajority vote. If we wanted to 
substitute a flat tax or a national sales tax for the Federal income 
tax, we could do that with a simple majority, so long as the amount of 
revenue intended to be raised was not greater than the current revenue 
of the Internal Revenue Code.
  We know it will work. We know we need it. We know the Federal 
Government is spending too much money. The gentleman from Arizona [Mr. 
Shadegg] pointed out that every time we raise a dollar of taxes, 
historically, spending goes up $1.59. It is time to act.
  Now, in my final summary I want to say once again that if we limit 
the ability to raise taxes over time, we limit the ability to spend. If 
we limit the ability to spend, over time we force ourselves to focus on 
spending reduction, not tax increases.
  I have not heard anybody say this amendment would not work. We know 
it works in the States that have it. I have not heard anybody stand up 
primarily on the Democratic side and say they want to raise taxes. So 
my assumption is that we can all vote in a bipartisan fashion to make 
it more difficult to raise taxes.
  Let us vote for the Barton constitutional amendment. Let us require a

[[Page H1505]]

two-thirds vote to raise taxes in the future on the American taxpayer.
  Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.


                             General Leave

  Mr. CANADY of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all 
Members may have 5 legislative days within which to revise and extend 
their remarks on House Joint Resolution 62.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Solomon). Is there objection to the 
request of the gentleman from Florida?
  There was no objection.
  Mr. CANADY of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my 
time.
  The issue before the House today is very clear: Should it be more 
difficult for Congress to raise taxes? Should we put in place a 
requirement that will help protect the American taxpayer from an 
overreaching Federal Government?
  This amendment is not, as some of its opponents contend, a trivial 
proposal. It is a proposal that deals with the fundamental issue 
concerning the relationship between Government and the people. It is an 
amendment that seeks to restrain Government and to increase freedom. It 
is a proposal that should be approved by this House and sent to the 
State for their ratification. I urge the Members of the House to vote 
yes.
  Mr. POMEROY. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to House Joint 
Resolution 62, a proposed constitutional amendment to require a two-
thirds majority vote to approve bills that increase internal revenue by 
more than a de minimis amount.
  This amendment, which its supporters freely acknowledge will fail in 
the House and will not likely even be considered by the Senate, serves 
only to postpone consideration of a balanced budget plan that includes 
actual tax relief for American working families. I would remind my 
colleagues that April 15 is not only tax day but is also the day by 
which Congress is required by law to have passed a budget resolution. 
Unfortunately, because the majority waited 2 months after the President 
submitted his budget on February 6 before engaging the White House in 
serious negotiations, the House is today engaging in empty political 
gestures rather than enacting a balanced budget plan with real tax 
relief.
  Besides being a diversion from the important task of balancing the 
budget, House Joint Resolution 62 also violates the democratic 
principle of majority rule.
  The Constitution specified just three instances in which a 
supermajority vote is required for approval by Congress--overriding the 
President's veto, submission of a constitutional amendment to the 
States, and expelling a Member from the House. With these three limited 
exceptions, the Founding Fathers adhered closely to the fundamental 
principle of majority rule. It is important to note that none of the 
exceptions relate to public policy issues but rather to protecting the 
Constitution and establishing the balance of powers between the 
executive and legislative branches of the Federal Government. House 
Joint Resolution 62, on the other hand, would give a minority of 
members the authority to control a fundamental component of fiscal 
policy.
  In summary, I urge my colleagues to reject this measure and move 
forward to agree on a plan to enact tax relief for working families 
while balancing the budget by 2002.
  Mr. GILCHREST. Mr. Speaker, in the landmark case of McCulloch versus 
Maryland, America's first judicial giant, John Marshall, wrote that the 
power to tax is the power to destroy. To be sure, in that instance 
Justice Marshall was seeking to prevent my home State of Maryland from 
taxing a Federal bank, but the principle remains. The fact is that 
taxation, taken to the extreme, can render meaningless the right to 
property, freedom of contract, or virtually any other freedom. For 
example, we can all agree that a high enough tax on newspaper profits 
would make freedom of the press moot. Excessive or capricious tax 
policy can similarly erode nearly every other freedom we enjoy in one 
way or another.
  This amendment simply clarifies that Congress' use of that 
potentially destructive power--the power of taxation--should be subject 
to a higher approval standard than that of Congress' other powers as 
defined under article I, section 8 of the Constitution. This amendment 
would make it subject to the same super-majority requirements used for 
constitutional amendment, veto override, or treaty ratification.
  It is true that the founders did not intend for taxation to be 
subject to the same requirements. But it is also true that their 
standards were adopted prior to the ratification, indeed the proposal, 
of the 16th amendment. Prior to the 16th amendment, the power of 
taxation meant tariffs and excise taxes. But the 16th amendment created 
the income tax which refocused taxation on the livelihoods of 
individuals. When the rights of individuals to earn a living face 
potential threats from Government power, there should be a higher 
legislative standard for Government to use that power. The amendment 
before us creates such a standard.
  Mr. Chairman, today many people feel the strain attendant to tax 
rates which have risen continually over decades. On this day more than 
any other, our constituents are aware of the potentially destructive 
power of federal taxation. I am supporting this amendment to provide my 
constituents a reasonable level of protection against that. I urge my 
colleagues to do the same.
  Mr. GILMAN. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of House Joint Resolution 
62 to provide for a constitutional amendment requiring a two-thirds 
vote for any bill that increases taxes. It is imperative, and 
appropriate on the day that all Americans must file their tax returns, 
that Congress approve a tax limitation amendment making it more 
difficult for future Congresses to raise taxes.
  This year, Tax Freedom Day comes on May 9, the 129th day of the year. 
This means that the average working American will work 128 days, 1 day 
later than last year, to pay off their tax bill. This is why I support 
tax relief for working Americans and why I support this amendment.
  As my colleagues know, during the 104th Congress we voted twice on a 
constitutional supermajority requirement to raise taxes. I was pleased 
to support this amendment then and plan on doing so today.
  This amendment would only apply to changes to the Internal Revenue 
laws. Revenue increases subject to the supermajority requirement 
including income taxes, estate and gift taxes, payroll taxes, and 
excise taxes. The amendment would not cover tariffs, user fees, 
voluntary payments, or bills, having secondary revenue implications, if 
they do not change the Internal Revenue laws.
  Accordingly, I urge my colleagues to support this necessary, 
commonsense amendment to limit increase taxes.
  Mr. PACKARD. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in full support of the tax 
limitation amendment this House will soon consider. This week, I am 
reminded of the many hardworking families in southern California and 
across the country who foot the bill year after year for Washington's 
tax and spend mentality.
  The pockets of hardworking Americans should never be mistaken for the 
special interest cookie jar. For far too long, Washington has abused 
its power at the expense of America's families. In the last half 
century alone, the percentage of family income taken back for Federal 
taxes has jumped from 5 percent to 24 percent. When you add in other 
taxes, the average family loses 40 percent of their income to 
government. That is simply unacceptable.
  The 1993 Clinton tax increase of $275 billion passed by only 1 vote. 
The fact that the largest tax increase in the history of the world came 
down to just one person's decision should disturb every American. If a 
supermajority requirement for tax increases had been in effect then, 
this tax increase would have never passed.
  Its not Washington's money--and it is only right that we protect 
those who have worked for it--by enabling them to keep it. The sad fact 
is, Americans are finding it harder and harder just to keep food on the 
table, let alone save for a child's tuition or pay for braces.
  This legislation is a huge step in the right direction. We should 
protect American families from being pick-pocketed by Uncle Sam each 
time our leaders fund a new program or refuse to eliminate waste. Its 
tough love for big government bureaucracy and it is long overdue. I 
encourage my colleagues to support the tax limitation amendment.
  Mr. BEREUTER. Mr. Speaker, this Member rises in reluctant opposition 
to House Joint Resolution 62, the so-called tax limitation amendment. 
Certainly it would be more politically expedient to simply go along and 
vote in support of a constitutional amendment requiring two-thirds 
approval by Congress for any tax increases. However, as a matter of 
conscience, this Member cannot do that.
  As this Member stated when a similar amendment was considered by the 
House 1 year ago, there is a great burden of proof to deviate from the 
basic principle of our democracy--the principle of majority rule. 
Unfortunately, this Member does not believe the proponents of this 
amendment have met this burden.
  There should be no question of this Member's continued and 
enthusiastic support for a balanced budget and a constitutional 
amendment requiring such. Tax increases should not be employed to 
achieve a balanced budget. That is why this Member supported the 
inclusion of a supermajority requirement in the rules of the House 
which were adopted at the beginning of the 104th and 105th Congresses. 
However, to go beyond that and amend the Constitution is, in this 
Member's opinion, unreasonable and it is the reason for why this

[[Page H1506]]

Member will vote against House Joint Resolution 62.
  Mr. CANADY of Florida. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my 
time.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. All time for debate has expired.
  The Chair has been advised that the gentleman from Missouri [Mr. 
Gephardt] will not be offering an amendment.
  Pursuant to House Resolution 113, the previous question is ordered on 
the joint resolution, as amended.
  The question is on the engrossment and third reading of the joint 
resolution.
  The joint resolution was ordered to be engrossed and read a third 
time, and was read the third time.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The question is on passage of the joint 
resolution.
  The question was taken.
  Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Speaker, I object to the vote on the ground that a 
quorum is not present and make the point of order that a quorum is not 
present.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Evidently a quorum is not present.
  The Sergeant at Arms will notify absent Members.
  The vote was taken by electronic device, and there were--yeas 233, 
nays 190, not voting 9, as follows:

                             [Roll No. 78]

                               YEAS--233

     Aderholt
     Andrews
     Archer
     Armey
     Bachus
     Baker
     Ballenger
     Barcia
     Barr
     Barrett (NE)
     Bartlett
     Barton
     Bass
     Berry
     Bilbray
     Bilirakis
     Bliley
     Blunt
     Boehner
     Bonilla
     Bono
     Brady
     Bryant
     Bunning
     Burr
     Burton
     Buyer
     Callahan
     Calvert
     Camp
     Canady
     Cannon
     Castle
     Chabot
     Chambliss
     Chenoweth
     Christensen
     Coble
     Coburn
     Collins
     Combest
     Condit
     Cook
     Cooksey
     Cox
     Cramer
     Crane
     Crapo
     Cubin
     Cunningham
     Danner
     Davis (VA)
     Deal
     DeLay
     Diaz-Balart
     Dickey
     Doolittle
     Dreier
     Duncan
     Dunn
     Ehlers
     Ehrlich
     Emerson
     English
     Ensign
     Etheridge
     Everett
     Ewing
     Fawell
     Foley
     Forbes
     Fowler
     Fox
     Franks (NJ)
     Frelinghuysen
     Gallegly
     Ganske
     Gekas
     Gibbons
     Gilman
     Goode
     Goodlatte
     Goodling
     Gordon
     Goss
     Graham
     Granger
     Green
     Greenwood
     Gutknecht
     Hall (TX)
     Hansen
     Harman
     Hastert
     Hastings (WA)
     Hayworth
     Hefley
     Herger
     Hilleary
     Hobson
     Hoekstra
     Horn
     Hulshof
     Hunter
     Hutchinson
     Hyde
     Inglis
     Istook
     Jenkins
     John
     Johnson, Sam
     Jones
     Kasich
     Kelly
     Kim
     King (NY)
     Kingston
     Klug
     Knollenberg
     Kolbe
     LaHood
     Largent
     Latham
     LaTourette
     Lazio
     Leach
     Lewis (KY)
     Linder
     Livingston
     LoBiondo
     Lucas
     Maloney (CT)
     Manzullo
     McCarthy (NY)
     McCollum
     McCrery
     McDade
     McHugh
     McInnis
     McIntosh
     McIntyre
     McKeon
     Metcalf
     Mica
     Miller (FL)
     Molinari
     Moran (KS)
     Myrick
     Nethercutt
     Neumann
     Ney
     Northup
     Norwood
     Nussle
     Oxley
     Packard
     Pallone
     Pappas
     Parker
     Paul
     Paxon
     Pease
     Peterson (MN)
     Peterson (PA)
     Petri
     Pickering
     Pitts
     Pombo
     Portman
     Pryce (OH)
     Quinn
     Radanovich
     Ramstad
     Regula
     Riggs
     Riley
     Roemer
     Rogan
     Rogers
     Rohrabacher
     Ros-Lehtinen
     Royce
     Ryun
     Salmon
     Sanchez
     Sandlin
     Sanford
     Saxton
     Scarborough
     Schaefer, Dan
     Schaffer, Bob
     Sensenbrenner
     Sessions
     Shadegg
     Shays
     Sherman
     Shimkus
     Shuster
     Skeen
     Skelton
     Smith (MI)
     Smith (NJ)
     Smith (OR)
     Smith (TX)
     Smith, Linda
     Snowbarger
     Solomon
     Souder
     Spence
     Stearns
     Stump
     Sununu
     Talent
     Tauzin
     Taylor (MS)
     Taylor (NC)
     Thomas
     Thornberry
     Thune
     Tiahrt
     Traficant
     Upton
     Wamp
     Watkins
     Watts (OK)
     Weldon (FL)
     Weldon (PA)
     Weller
     White
     Whitfield
     Wicker
     Wolf
     Young (AK)

                               NAYS--190

     Abercrombie
     Ackerman
     Allen
     Baesler
     Baldacci
     Barrett (WI)
     Bateman
     Becerra
     Bentsen
     Bereuter
     Berman
     Bishop
     Blagojevich
     Blumenauer
     Boehlert
     Bonior
     Borski
     Boswell
     Boucher
     Boyd
     Brown (CA)
     Brown (FL)
     Brown (OH)
     Campbell
     Capps
     Cardin
     Carson
     Clay
     Clayton
     Clement
     Clyburn
     Conyers
     Coyne
     Cummings
     Davis (FL)
     Davis (IL)
     DeFazio
     DeGette
     Delahunt
     DeLauro
     Dellums
     Deutsch
     Dicks
     Dingell
     Dixon
     Doggett
     Dooley
     Doyle
     Edwards
     Engel
     Eshoo
     Evans
     Farr
     Fattah
     Fazio
     Filner
     Foglietta
     Ford
     Frank (MA)
     Frost
     Furse
     Gejdenson
     Gephardt
     Gillmor
     Gonzalez
     Gutierrez
     Hall (OH)
     Hamilton
     Hastings (FL)
     Hefner
     Hill
     Hilliard
     Hinchey
     Hinojosa
     Holden
     Hooley
     Hostettler
     Houghton
     Hoyer
     Jackson (IL)
     Jackson-Lee (TX)
     Jefferson
     Johnson (CT)
     Johnson (WI)
     Johnson, E. B.
     Kanjorski
     Kaptur
     Kennedy (MA)
     Kennedy (RI)
     Kennelly
     Kildee
     Kilpatrick
     Kind (WI)
     Kleczka
     Klink
     Kucinich
     LaFalce
     Lampson
     Lantos
     Levin
     Lewis (GA)
     Lipinski
     Lofgren
     Luther
     Maloney (NY)
     Markey
     Martinez
     Mascara
     Matsui
     McCarthy (MO)
     McDermott
     McGovern
     McHale
     McKinney
     McNulty
     Meehan
     Meek
     Menendez
     Millender-McDonald
     Miller (CA)
     Minge
     Mink
     Moakley
     Mollohan
     Moran (VA)
     Morella
     Murtha
     Nadler
     Neal
     Oberstar
     Obey
     Olver
     Ortiz
     Owens
     Pascrell
     Pastor
     Pelosi
     Pickett
     Pomeroy
     Porter
     Poshard
     Price (NC)
     Rahall
     Rangel
     Reyes
     Rivers
     Rothman
     Roukema
     Roybal-Allard
     Rush
     Sabo
     Sanders
     Sawyer
     Schumer
     Scott
     Serrano
     Shaw
     Sisisky
     Skaggs
     Slaughter
     Smith, Adam
     Snyder
     Spratt
     Stabenow
     Stark
     Stenholm
     Stokes
     Strickland
     Stupak
     Tanner
     Tauscher
     Thompson
     Thurman
     Tierney
     Torres
     Turner
     Velazquez
     Vento
     Visclosky
     Walsh
     Waters
     Watt (NC)
     Waxman
     Wexler
     Weygand
     Wise
     Woolsey
     Wynn
     Yates
     Young (FL)

                             NOT VOTING--9

     Costello
     Flake
     Gilchrest
     Lewis (CA)
     Lowey
     Manton
     Payne
     Schiff
     Towns

                              {time}  1901

  Mr. MENENDEZ, Ms. HOOLEY of Oregon, Mr. WYNN, and Mr. VISCLOSKY 
changed their vote from ``yea'' to ``nay.''
  So (two-thirds not having voted in favor thereof) the joint 
resolution was not passed.
  The result of the vote was announced as above recorded.
  A motion to reconsider was laid on the table.

                          ____________________