[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 87 (Friday, June 20, 1997)]
[Senate]
[Pages S6028-S6030]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     PRINCIPLES FOR TAX LEGISLATION

  Mr. FORD. Mr. President, when we start debating tax legislation on 
the floor, I hope our debate will be governed by a few basic 
principles. Let me state those questions which are most important to me 
personally. Each of these questions needs a satisfactory answer.
  Are the tax benefits spread evenly across all income levels?
  Is the tax legislation consistent with the budget agreement?
  Does the tax package undermine a balanced budget after 10 years?
  We need answers which meet basic standards of fairness and sound 
public policy. These are the standards I think we should use to judge 
any tax bill that comes to this floor.
  Today, I would like to talk a little more about the first concern I 
have mentioned how evenly the benefits of the proposed tax bills will 
fall across income levels.
  A distribution table put out by the Senate Finance Committee claims 
that 74 percent of the tax benefits in the proposal pending before that 
Committee go to those making under $75,000; 74 percent. That sounds 
pretty good.
  On the other hand, our analysis shows that 43 percent of the benefits 
go to the wealthiest 10 percent, and two-thirds of the benefits go to 
the top 20 percent.
  How can the two analysis be so different? Well, let's look at some of 
the differences.
  First, the Republican claims about who gets the tax cuts are based 
only on 5-year projections--before many of the backloaded tax breaks 
are fully implemented. Our analysis looks at the tax cuts when fully 
implemented. Let me repeat that. They cut their analysis off after 5 
years, before many of the tax breaks are fully implemented. You can 
play a lot of games by cutting off the analysis after 5 years. What 
happens after 10 years? Under the Republican income distribution, they 
will never tell you. But why not?
  Our income distribution looks at these new tax breaks when they are 
fully implemented. What a difference it makes. Apparently the most 
backloaded tax breaks provide very little benefit for low and middle 
income workers.
  Second, because the Republican claims are only based on 5 years, they 
treat capital gains cut as hardly any tax cuts at all. In fact, the 
Republican analysis of the House tax package claims that the capital 
gains tax cut is actually a tax increase for upper income taxpayers 
during the first 5 years. Imagine that--a capital gains cut that counts 
as a tax increase.
  Third, the Republican claims about who gets the tax cuts ignore the 
impact that estate tax cuts will have in individual taxpayers. It 
simply ignores them. They don't count estate tax benefits at all.
  The Republican claims about who gets the tax cuts ignore the fact 
that many of the proposed tax cuts are backloaded--meaning that the 
full impact is not felt until well after the first 5 years, and in some 
cases not until well after 10 years. This means they have essentially 
ignored not only the impact of capital gains cuts, but also the 
backloaded IRA's, and the phase-in of estates taxes.
  Mr. President, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has 
produced a more detailed analysis of the distribution tables prepared 
by the Joint Committee on Taxation on the House tax bill. That analysis 
contains essentially the same flaws as the Senate analysis. I ask 
unanimous consent that this document, entitled ``Joint Tax Committee 
Distribution Tables Produce Misleading Results,'' be printed in the 
Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

      Center on Budget and Policy Priorities--Joint Tax Committee 
             Distribution Tables Produce Misleading Results


tables fail to account for any of the benefits from the tax cuts worth 
                   the most to high-income taxpayers

       According to distribution tables the Joint Committee on 
     Taxation has prepared the tax cuts proposed by Rep. Bill 
     Archer, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, would 
     concentrate their benefits among middle-class Americans. This 
     finding is sharply at odds with the content of the 
     legislation. Four of the largest tax cuts--the capital gains, 
     Individual Retirement Account, estate, and corporate 
     alternative minimum tax provisions--provide the large 
     majority of their benefits to households with high incomes.
       The Joint Committee's handling of these four provisions is 
     fundamentally flawed. In effect, its distribution tables do 
     not reflect any of the benefits that taxpayers would receive 
     from the four provisions.
       The Joint Tax Committee distribution tables ignore the 
     effects of reductions in estate and corporate taxes. The 
     Joint Committee did not examine the distributional effects of 
     these tax changes.
       The Joint Tax Committee distribution tables do consider the 
     effects of the changes in the capital gains tax and the IRA 
     provisions. The distribution tables, however, go only through 
     2002. Because the capital gains tax cuts and the IRA 
     provisions are heavily backloaded, they do not result in net 
     reductions in revenue collections during the time period the 
     Joint Tax Committee examined. (For example, taxpayers would 
     not begin to receive tax cuts from capital gains indexing 
     until 2004). And because they do not result in net revenue 
     reductions, the Joint Tax Committee assumes these provisions 
     produce no net tax cut benefits in these years.
       In fact, the Joint Tax Committee estimates that during the 
     period through 2002, net capital gains tax payments would 
     rise $1 billion due to the Archer capital gains tax 
     provisions. In its distributions tables, the Joint Tax 
     Committee treats this $1 billion as a tax increase, primarily 
     on taxpayers at high income levels. As a result, under the 
     Joint Tax Committee tables, high-income taxpayers appear to 
     be the victims of a tax increase imposed by the Archer 
     capital gains tax cuts.
       By considering a time period in which the capital gains 
     provisions cause a short-term increase in revenue collections 
     and the IRA provisions result in no significant net change in 
     revenue collections (the IRA provisions lose only $33 million 
     cumulatively in the years through 2002), the Joint Tax 
     Committee's distribution tables dramatically understate the 
     benefits of the tax package to high-income taxpayers.
       While the capital gains and IRA proposals produce no net 
     revenue loss in the years through 2002, the combined revenue 
     loss from these provisions is $51 billion from 2003 through 
     2007, years the Joint Tax Committee distribution tables do 
     not examine. The large cost of these provisions during this 
     second five-year period stands in sharp contrast to the $1 
     billion net gain in revenue from the capital gains and IRA 
     provisions from 1998 to 2002, years the Committee's 
     distribution tables do examine.
       By 2007, the combined cost of the capital gains and IRA 
     provisions exceeds $15 billion a year and is growing at a 
     rate of nearly $3 billion a year.
       If the Joint Tax Committee had examined the capital gains 
     and estate tax provisions when they were fully in effect--and 
     if it also had distributed the effects of the reductions in 
     the estate and corporate alternative minimum taxes--the 
     degree to which the tax benefits of the Archer plan accrue to 
     high-income taxpayers would be shown to be vastly larger than 
     the Joint Committee on Taxation tables indicate.
       Like the capital gains and IRA tax cuts, the estate tax 
     provisions of the Archer plan are heavily backloaded. (The 
     corporate alternative minimum tax provisions are the only 
     provisions principally benefitting high-income taxpayers that 
     are not heavily backloaded.)
       As a consequence of the backloading, the four upper-income 
     tax cut provisions account for a growing proportion of the 
     tax package over time. Specifically, in 2003, the capital 
     gains, IRA, estate and corporate alternative minimum tax 
     provisions account for 30 percent of the gross cost of the 
     tax package. By 2005, they account for 35 percent of the 
     gross tax cuts in the tax package. By 2007, the figure is 42 
     percent. By about 2010, the upper-income provisions, which 
     concentrate the bulk of their benefits among a small fraction 
     of the population, would account for a majority of the gross 
     tax cuts in the package.
       Furthermore, these percentage figures do not reflect 
     several other major tax cuts in the package that would confer 
     a sizable share of their tax cut benefits on high-income 
     taxpayers--such as the provision weakening the individual 
     alternative minimum tax and the $10,000-a-year education 
     tax deduction, which includes no income limit on the 
     taxpayers who can claim it. Eventually, the Archer plan 
     becomes a piece of legislation whose predominant effect is 
     to provide upper-income tax relief and enlarge the after-
     tax incomes of those in the wealthiest strata of society.


changes in joint tax committee methodology skew the distribution tables

       Also of significance, the methodology the Joint Tax 
     Committee has used in preparing the distribution tables on 
     the Archer plan differs in important ways from the 
     methodology the Joint Committee employed until late 1994.
       Tax bills have been introduced on numerous previous 
     occasions that phase in the tax cuts they contain. 
     Accordingly, the Joint Tax Committee had to address on many 
     prior occasions the question of how to estimate the 
     distributional effects of tax provisions whose full effects 
     would not be felt for more

[[Page S6029]]

     than five years. Until the end of the 103rd Congress, the 
     Joint Tax Committee traditionally addressed this issue by 
     examining the distributional effects of the proposed tax 
     changes when the changes were fully in effect. This also is 
     the approach most tax analysts endorse and the approach the 
     Treasury Department continues to use. But the Joint Tax 
     Committee did not use this approach in analyzing the 
     distributional effects of the Archer tax package. It thereby 
     has significantly understated the effects of the backloaded 
     tax cuts in the Archer plan that primarily benefit high-
     income taxpayers.
       The Joint Tax Committee also has changed its methodology in 
     another key respect. The capital gains and IRA provisions of 
     the Archer tax package are designed so they increase tax 
     collections in the period from 1998 to 2002. This increase in 
     collections does not reflect an increase in tax rates or a 
     change in tax law under which previously exempt income is 
     made subject to taxation. Rather, the increased collections 
     reflect voluntary changes in behavior by taxpayers who choose 
     to make tax payments in the next five years that they would 
     have made in later years in return for very generous tax cuts 
     for years to come.
       For example, the Joint Tax Committee estimates that the 
     Archer capital gains provisions would produce a net increase 
     in revenues in the years through 2002. In the first two 
     years, these provisions would raise revenues because some 
     investors would decide to take advantage of the new, lower 
     capital gains tax rate to sell more assets than they 
     otherwise would have sold in those years. The increased tax 
     collections that result from the sale of an increased volume 
     of assets in these two years do not represent a tax 
     increase the government has required investors to pay. To 
     the contrary, the increase in tax collections would occur 
     because some investors would elect to sell in the next two 
     years some assets they otherwise would have sold at a 
     later date. The investors would sell these assets because 
     they concluded it was in their interest to do so.
       Similarly, the capital gains indexing proposal offers 
     investors the option of paying capital gains tax in 2001 and 
     2002 on the increase in the value of various assets they hold 
     between the time the assets were purchased and January 1, 
     2001, in return for large capital gains tax cuts when they 
     sell these assets in later years. Because this offers such a 
     sweet deal to investors, many would use it. They would pay 
     capital gains taxes in 2001 and 2002 that they would 
     otherwise have paid in future years when the assets are 
     actually sold, and they would reap large tax cut benefits as 
     a result. Here, too, the additional revenue collections in 
     2001 and 2002 do not represent tax increases the government 
     has imposed on these individuals. To the contrary, these 
     investors are securing large tax cuts for themselves.
       The Archer IRA proposals also have this characteristic. 
     They are engineered so taxpayers can opt to pay taxes during 
     1999 through 2002 that they otherwise would pay in future 
     years in return for very generous tax breaks for years to 
     come. Here, also, taxpayers would choose to accelerate some 
     tax payments into the next several years because it would be 
     in their interest to do so.
       Under the traditional methodology the Joint Tax Committee 
     used in the past, these accelerated tax payments that 
     individuals would elect to make in the next few years, in 
     return for large future tax breaks, would not be treated as 
     tax increases imposed upon these individuals. Under the new 
     methodology it adopted in late 1994, however, the Joint Tax 
     Committee treats these additional revenue collections as tax 
     increases. As a result, the Joint Tax Committee's 
     distribution tables reflect the incongruous assumption that 
     the net effect of the Archer capital gains and IRA proposals 
     on wealthy individuals is to saddle them with a tax increase.


 leading analysts reject new joint tax methodology on the distribution 
                     of capital gains tax benefits

       Many of the leading analysts in the field reject the new 
     Joint Tax Committee method as producing severe distortions in 
     the distribution of the benefits that a capital gains tax cut 
     produces. Among those rejecting the new Joint Tax Committee 
     approach are: Robert Reischauer, former director of the 
     Congressional Budget Office; Henry Aaron, senior fellow at 
     the Brookings Institution; and Jane Gravelle, the 
     Congressional Research Service's leading tax expert and 
     analyst. In addition, several years ago Gravelle co-authored 
     an article on this matter with Lawrence Lindsey, a noted 
     conservative economist who served until recently on the 
     Federal Reserve Board and who supports a capital gains tax 
     cut. In their article, Lindsey and Gravelle explicitly 
     rejected the methodology the Joint Tax Committee has now 
     adopted.
       As Aaron has observed, investors who respond to a capital 
     gains tax cut by selling more assets are people who face one 
     set of opportunities under the current capital gains tax 
     rates--and find it financially advantageous not to make 
     additional asset sales--but face a more generous set of 
     opportunities when capital gains tax rates are reduced and 
     choose to follow a different course. ``Since they have the 
     option of doing what they did before (i.e., not selling 
     additional assets), but the new, more favorable tax rates 
     induce them to do something else, they must be better off,'' 
     Aaron explains. ``It is logically absurd to count them as 
     worse off in any way whatsoever.''
       Aaron's view is supported by an article Gravelle and 
     Lindsey co-authored in 1988 before Lindsey joined the Fed. In 
     the article they stated:
       ``* * * suppose a reduction in the capital gains tax rate 
     led to substantially more capital gains realizations [i.e., 
     more sales of assets] and actually increased the tax revenue 
     paid by upper-income groups. * * * it would be totally 
     inappropriate to say that their tax burden had increased. 
     After all, with a lower tax rate, these upper-income 
     taxpayers are less burdened than they were before, even 
     though they pay more taxes.'' \1\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
     \1\ This quote is from Jane G. Gravelle and Lawrence B. 
     Lindsey, ``Capital Gains,'' Tax Notes, January 25, 1988, p. 
     399. Gravelle included this quote in Jane G. Gravelle, 
     ``Distributional Effects of Tax Provisions in the Contract 
     with America as reported by the Ways and Means Committee,'' 
     CRS Report for Congress, April 3, 1995.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
       In addition, in a more recent analysis examining the new 
     Joint Tax Committee methodology, Gravelle notes that the 
     standard methodology, if anything, understates the benefits 
     that investors would secure from a capital gains tax cut 
     because it does not reflect the tax benefits they would 
     receive when they voluntarily sell more assets to take 
     advantage of a lower capital gains tax rate. She also 
     observes that economists generally would reject the new 
     methodology.

  Mr. FORD. Mr. President, let's not cook the books. Let's have a 
straightforward debate about who is getting the tax breaks that have 
been proposed, and whether we can do better. We hear a lot about income 
tax, but what about payroll tax?
  Let's not ignore payroll taxes when we talk about who is carrying the 
tax burden today. Workers in this country pay a 7.65-percent payroll 
tax to finance the Social Security Program. They pay an additional 1.45 
percent payroll tax to finance the Medicare Program. Social Security 
taxes are collected on the first dollar earned--up to $62,700. Medicare 
taxes are collected on all earned income.
  The majority of workers in this country pay more in payroll taxes 
than they do in income taxes. So it is insulting for many of these 
workers to hear some around here talk about low income workers as if 
they pay no taxes. You will actually hear some Members come to this 
floor and argue that lower income workers do not get much of a tax 
break because they do not pay many taxes. They will say lower income 
workers do not get a full $500 per child tax credit because they do not 
pay enough in taxes.
  This is just not true. A tax is a tax for most folks--whether they 
are income taxes or payroll taxes or estate taxes or something else. 
But by counting only income taxes and ignoring payroll taxes, it means 
that upper income taxpayers get more of the tax breaks, while lower and 
middle income workers get less.
  So we have to do better.
  Now, we will also hear that the top 10 or 20 percent get most of the 
tax benefit because they generate most of the income. Well, let's put 
that in perspective as well. According to the Congressional Budget 
Office, in 1994 the wealthiest 20 percent of families made about 48.1 
percent of family income in this country. Yet under the Senate Finance 
Committee bill, they get 67 percent of the tax breaks.
  Or let me put it another way--from a middle class perspective. Again 
according to CBO, in 1994 the bottom 60 percent of families made 27.3 
percent of the income. Yet under the Senate Finance Committee bill, 
they get only 12 percent of the tax benefit. So I think we are a little 
out of balance. When the bill reaches the floor, I hope we can do 
better. I hope we can make it a little more fair. It is the least we 
can do.
  Last, Mr. President, when we talk about the fairness of this package, 
we need to talk about how the revenue raisers in the Senate Finance 
Committee tax package affect different income groups.
  Last night, the Finance Committee voted to increase excise taxes on 
cigarettes by 20 cents per pack. I understand that it's politically 
correct to attack the tobacco industry. And we're going to see plenty 
of piling on over the next few months regarding tobacco.
  But let's talk for a minute about how this cigarette tax affects 
various income groups. It's well documented that cigarette excise taxes 
are the most regressive of all taxes--meaning they hit poor folks a lot 
harder than they hit upper income folks. According to a 1997 KPMG Peat 
Marwick study, U.S. families earning about $30,000 or less earned

[[Page S6030]]

about 16 percent of all income generated, but paid 47 percent of all 
tobacco taxes. Let me say it again. Families earning less than $30,000 
pay 47 percent of all cigarette excise taxes.
  The changes in the tax bill made last night will make the disparity 
among poor families even greater.
  On average, low income persons pay 15 times more in tobacco taxes 
than upper income individuals.
  And what was this tax increase on low income people going to be used 
for? To accelerate the increase in estate tax relief, which goes 
primarily to upper income individuals. This is a reverse-Robin Hood 
amendment. We are taxing the poor to help the wealthy.
  The amendment will also reportedly be used to provide $8 billion in 
additional spending for health insurance. Just a couple of weeks ago we 
heard how this would violate the budget agreement. We voted 55 to 45 
against an amendment that would raise taxes in order to raise spending 
on health insurance. Phone calls were made to the President of the 
United States to tell him how this would violate the budget agreement 
and how he better announce he was opposed to the amendment. Yet last 
night, some of the very same Senators who made those arguments on the 
floor a few weeks ago apparently voted in favor of a very similar 
amendment. How could it violate the budget agreement a few weeks ago 
and not now?
  Last, Mr. President, the timing of this tax increase is most 
interesting. Later today we may hear an announcement of a ``global 
settlement'' of tobacco litigation. The agreement will require 
congressional action. As I understand it, this agreement completely 
fails to address the interests of tobacco farmers and factory workers, 
nearly all of whom are low to moderate income workers. But we will have 
that debate on another day.
  What is interesting today, however, is the impact of that agreement 
on all these proposed cigarette tax increases. The tobacco settlement, 
if implemented, will have an immediate impact on prices, raising the 
price of a pack of cigarettes by somewhere in the neighborhood of a 
dollar. This, of course, will depress consumption--which in turn will 
reduce revenues by about 20 to 25 percent, or maybe even higher. So any 
proposals in the reconciliation bill to raise revenues by raising 
cigarette taxes will prove to be overly optimistic as soon as any 
global settlement is implemented. This means less revenue will actually 
be raised, and our deficit problems will be worse--particularly in the 
out years. So there is a great ripple effect as work here if these tax 
increase proposals succeed.
  But last, Mr. President, let me return to my initial point. The tax 
package considered by the Finance Committee benefits upper income 
individuals too heavily. The cigarette tax adopted last night makes 
matters even worse, because it is primarily a tax on low income 
individuals. So not only do low income folks get virtually none of the 
tax breaks--but they will now get a tax increase.
  I hope my colleagues who claim great concern for low income people 
will keep this in mind as they prepare to vote on the tax 
reconciliation bill. As for this Senator, I think a bad bill was made 
worse by the Finance Committee last night, and it is simply not a 
package I can support in its current form.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. SPECTER addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Pennsylvania.

                          ____________________