[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 90 (Tuesday, June 24, 1997)]
[House]
[Page H4225]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              TAX FAIRNESS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of 
January 21, 1997, the gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Olver] is 
recognized during morning hour debates for 3 minutes.
  Mr. OLVER. Mr. Speaker, in the next few days we are going to learn 
something about tax fairness here in America. We are going to learn 
something about the heart and soul of the two major political parties, 
my party, the Democratic Party, and the other party, the Republican 
Party. We are going to learn who each of those parties defends and who 
each of those parties serves and who each of those parties is willing 
to fight for.
  Mr. Speaker, almost 2 months ago, the President and the budget 
leadership from the two major parties reached agreement on a balanced 
budget by the year 2002, and they agreed on a tax cut, to boot, in that 
process. Now there is a lot of disagreement as to exactly who is 
supposed to get that tax cut, but the amount of the tax cut is agreed 
upon by both parties over a 5-year period and a 10-year period.
  Let me put that at family level. There are roughly 100 million 
families in America, and the agreement calls for roughly $100 billion 
of tax cut over 5 years. That is roughly $1,000 per family.
  Now, the Democratic Party and the Republican Party have different 
plans for how that tax cut is supposed to be given to the American 
people, and I want to compare the Republican plan with the Democratic 
plan by treating 20 families, just 20 families across the income 
scales, from the lowest income level to the highest income level, where 
under the agreed plan there is roughly $2,000 to be distributed to 20 
families.
  Mr. Speaker, in the Republican plan, the highest income single family 
among those 20 families, out of the $20,000 that is to be distributed, 
would get about $8,000 out of that. And if we add the next three 
families to it, so we have the four highest income families out of the 
20 spread across the whole spectrum of American life, they would get 
almost two-thirds of the tax reduction. Four families out of 20, 20 
percent of the families, would get two-thirds of all of the tax 
reduction.
  In the Democratic plan those same four families would get $6,000 
among those four families, or about 30 percent of the tax reduction. At 
the other end of the scale, the eight families at the lower end of the 
income brackets, which represent 40 percent of all Americans, they 
would get zero out of the Republican tax reduction plan. In the 
Democratic tax reduction plan, they would get almost 25 percent of the 
tax reduction.

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