[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 86 (Thursday, June 19, 1997)]
[House]
[Pages H4078-H4079]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                 TAX SYSTEM THAT ENCOURAGES WORK ETHIC

  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, I wanted to, on the subject of taxes, say 
two of the things we need in our tax code is we need responsibility to 
be encouraged and we need clarity. We need to have a tax system that 
encourages the work ethic and rewards it.
  Now, our welfare system, as my colleagues know, does not do that. 
Recently, in Savannah, there was a man who was on public assistance. He 
is 30 years old, and he bragged that he had 16 children. Now he has 
been very busy. But, of course, he has not been with the same woman for 
all 16 of these kids. But his comment on it was, ``Well, the Lord said 
be fruitful and multiply.'' That was his total explanation.
  But it is interesting that our tax system would reward that kind of 
irresponsibility through Government handouts. Right now the President 
wants to expand the proposed $500 child tax credit from working people 
who pay taxes to people who do not pay taxes, such as possibly this 30-
year-old father of 16 kids. There is no reason in the world why he, who 
does not pay taxes, should get this credit for irresponsibly siring so 
many children.
  We are parents. I am a father of four. It is very, very difficult to 
raise kids. And I would say, economically looking after their needs is 
only the minimum bit; you have to do a lot more for these children 
emotionally and so forth. But our tax system should support middle-
class parents economically for making responsible decisions, like 
having a job and having income and having a house, before you go out 
and have an untold number of children.
  Mr. SOUDER. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman would yield, we are about 
to head into another debate. There have been ads around the country. We 
have had quite a bit of turmoil in the Committee on Education and the 
and Workforce, and it is about to hit the floor too, that supposedly 
the Republicans are vying to circumvent the minimum wage as it relates 
to people on welfare.
  The issue, in case my colleagues have not heard about it, is this: 
People on welfare currently can get a package of benefits, depending on 
their mix of kids, about $15,000. When they take a job, under the new 
welfare bill, should the benefits that they are continuing to receive, 
because we have decided that we are not going to completely cut off the 
benefits, should those benefits count towards their wages?
  This is being portrayed as the work cutting the minimum wage, when in 
fact what we are saying is people who are working for the minimum wage 
currently and have never been on welfare should not receive up to 
$7,000 a year less than those people on welfare.

                              {time}  2245

  Yet somehow we are portrayed as the mean party. Somehow we are 
portrayed as being unfair and being mean-spirited when in fact what we 
have been trying to do is stand up for the working people of America to 
try to give tax benefits to try to help those people who have been 
trapped in the welfare system start to move into the private sector but 
not have these terrible inequities between those people who have been 
working and those people who are on welfare.

[[Page H4079]]

  We are going to fight this battle on the tax credits, we are going to 
fight the battle in the way we count benefits as we go into welfare, 
and the thrust of our program, by having a balanced budget and by 
reducing taxes, to try to make people who are working hard that have 
been bearing the brunt of the economic growth and the job growth in 
America, to give them some breaks and let them keep some of their own 
money.
  Mr. BOB SCHAFFER of Colorado. You know the middle class families of 
America feel left out primarily because the White House fails to 
acknowledge that they even exist. Listen to this:
  The Treasury Department says that they will not calculate income 
based on something they call family economic income.
  Now this is not the money you bring home. This is something else. 
This is how when you hear people talk about tax cuts for the rich, they 
are actually talking about just about everyone in America because 
congratulations, we are all rich now as a result of the calculation 
from the White House.
  Listen to this:
  They say income includes things like your IRA income, Keogh 
deductions, AFDC benefits, social security and one more thing, the 
imputed rent on an owner house.
  Now what this means is that if you own a home, the Federal 
Government, the Clinton administration, is going to assume that if you 
could earn rent on your house, that that is going to be calculated as 
your income. That is how a family earning $50,000 a year all of a 
sudden becomes in the rich category.
  So when you hear about tax cuts for the rich that you hear this term 
a lot, this really does apply to the average American family who the 
liberals in Washington all of a sudden want to demonize by calling you 
exceedingly wealthy.
  But you know these are the folks who we represent. This is my 
parents, my retired school teachers, my in-laws, the pipefitter, the 
Yates family in Mississippi, the Conklin family in Illinois, average 
American families who work hard every day making middle class incomes. 
We want to reduce their tax burden. The liberals in Washington want to 
call them millionaires somehow magically and suggest that they are 
somehow bad people who do not deserve a break.

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