[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 85 (Wednesday, June 18, 1997)]
[House]
[Page H3895]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        MIDDLE-CLASS TAX RELIEF

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Georgia [Mr. Kingston] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, we are in a very important debate right 
now over taxes. The Republican Party is working for middle-class tax 
relief, and the liberal Members of the Democrat Party and the President 
are working against middle-class tax relief. I think it is ironic that 
a President who ran in 1992 on a platform of supporting middle-class 
tax relief is now fighting middle-class tax relief.
  As my colleagues know, once the President was elected, his first act 
in 1993 was to pass the largest tax increase in the history of this 
country. Now, we are at another debate. For the first time in 16 years, 
because of a Republican majority in the House and Senate, we have an 
opportunity to give significant tax relief, and yet we are being 
accused of all kinds of things and we are having to fight for this.
  It is interesting, because 76 percent of the people who will benefit 
from the tax relief have a household income of $75,000 or less. Only 1 
percent of those who are going to have a tax benefit have a household 
income of over $200,000, yet we are being accused of giving a tax break 
for the wealthy.
  Mr. Speaker, I do not know what it is with the liberal psyche that 
being wealthy is synonymous with being evil. It is interesting, because 
entrepreneurs and people who tend to be wealthy create jobs in this 
country, and yet liberals seem to hate the job-creator.
  I strongly believe that we need tax relief for the middle-class, and 
will the entrepreneurs also benefit from it? Yes, they will. Is it bad? 
Well, I always take the case of Ted Turner. I am from Georgia. Ted 
Turner has brought CNN to Atlanta. He has created hundreds and hundreds 
of jobs. Is it bad? No; it is not. Will Ted Turner get some tax relief? 
Yes; he will. Is that horrible? What is so bad about that, I ask my 
liberal colleagues? Yet, we do not hear from them about that. All we 
hear is well, we just do not want the rich to get tax breaks. As I 
said, Mr. Speaker, 76 percent of the tax relief goes to families with a 
household income of under $75,000.
  Now, what is it that the liberals and the President are backing away 
from? We seem to be in a gridlock right now on the $500-per-child tax 
credit, and the way the Republican bill is, is that middle-class 
families with children under 17 years of age and with household incomes 
of under $110,000 will get a $500-per-child tax credit. Now, what does 
the President want to do? Well, he wants to use that tax credit to give 
another welfare benefit to people who are not paying taxes. So what has 
happened with a President who has promised middle-class tax relief, and 
also, incidentally, promised welfare reform, and only reluctantly 
passed welfare reform last year, now is trying to go back on that?
  Welfare enrollment has decreased 15 percent. There are less people 
dependent on the U.S. Government now than there were 1 year ago, and 
yet the President wants to fly in the face of all of that, break the 
spirit of that bipartisan legislation, if you will, by giving people 
who are not working a $500-per-child tax credit on top of something 
that we are already doing called the earned income tax credit, which is 
a benefit from going from welfare to work, and it is something that has 
had bipartisan support, and yet the President wants to say, no, that is 
not good enough, we are going to give you one more giveaway program. We 
are going to give you $500-per-child for every child you have while you 
are not paying taxes.
  Common sense would tell us, Mr. Speaker, that is a ridiculous thing 
to do, particularly when we have at stake 11 million middle-class 
children whose parents desperately need tax relief for education needs, 
for medical needs, for shelter, for food, and so forth like that.
  I am a father of four small children. Most of my friends, Mr. 
Speaker, are in the sandwich generation, if you will. That is, their 
parents are dependent on them or close to being dependent on them, and 
their children are dependent on them. I can say as I line up in the 
carpool line and as I go out to the Tee-ball field and I go out to the 
soccer field, and my wife is a proud soccer mom, I will say that the 
parents out there desperately need tax relief.
  Now, they are not coming out here in Washington and protesting, they 
are not writing letters, they are not sending us faxes every minute, 
and the reason why, Mr. Speaker, is because they are out working. These 
are folks who work 8, 9, 10 hours a day, 5 days a week. They want tax 
relief, but they do not have paid professional lobbyists who can go out 
and campaign for it. We just have to do it on our own and we have to do 
the right thing.
  This is the good old American middle-class who is getting squeezed 
year after year, they need tax relief, they do not need the President 
expanding welfare, they do not need the fun and games of politics, they 
do not need more big liberal programs. They need tax relief, and I urge 
my colleagues to support in a bipartisan fashion the Republican tax 
bill passed by the Committee on Ways and Means.

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