[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 90 (Tuesday, June 24, 1997)]
[House]
[Page H4224]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




              AMERICANS FAVOR TAX RELIEF FOR MIDDLE CLASS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 21, 1997, the gentleman from California [Mr. Miller] is 
recognized during morning hour debates for 3 minutes.
  Mr. MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, later this week, this Congress 
will make a choice about the future of America. As we debate the tax 
bill, we will have to make a choice between the Republican plan that 
assumes that the rich do not have enough money and that working 
families have too much, or we can choose the Democratic plan that 
believes what we ought to do with the tax cuts is try to help working 
families educate their children, take care of their children, provide 
for child care, and reinvest in America. Those are the two visions: The 
Republican plan that will give people who earn more than $250,000 an 
average benefit of $27,000 and will cost people that are earning 
$17,000, $18,000, and $20,000 real money.
  That is the difference in a vision of America. To take people who now 
have done very well in the stock market and decide that, when they had 
no expectations of capital gains, we should provide them a reduction on 
the profits that they make, while we should not provide tax relief to 
low-income working Americans.
  That is the choice and a vision of America. We have got to decide 
whether or not we are going to use the resources that we have saved as 
a result of the balanced budget efforts that we have made over the last 
5 years, whether or not those should be shared with working families in 
this country, or whether or not they ought to be lavished on the rich 
who simply do not need it. It is a matter of how we use those resources 
and how we promote families.
  We clearly know in this Congress what the American people want. They 
have said it over and over again in the polls that they want us to use 
the resources of the country to improve the educational opportunities 
for their children, to reduce crime, to protect the Medicare benefits 
for the elderly, and to balance the Federal budget. But that is not the 
choice that the Republicans are taking this week.
  In fact, what they are doing is racing to pay back those who have 
supported their campaigns by lavishing reductions in capital gains tax, 
estate tax and getting rid of the corporate alternative minimum tax 
which says that for those large corporations that have huge write-offs, 
even they must pay something for the privilege of being in America. 
Then we will go back to the days when corporations pay no taxes no 
matter how much money they make. That is not equity. That is not 
fairness. That is the not the choice of the American people.
  Mr. Speaker, we need to provide more equity, we need to provide more 
fairness. The No. 1 thing that the Americans demand of their Tax Code 
is fairness so that we know that everybody is contributing their fair 
share to making this the greatest country in the world. But that is not 
what the Republican tax bill does. The Republican tax bill heads off in 
another direction. It decides that those who are the wealthiest, those 
who are the richest should get the most, and those who are working 
hard, young families to raise children, should get the least. Somehow 
that just is not fair.

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