[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 90 (Tuesday, June 24, 1997)]
[House]
[Page H4313]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              TAX FAIRNESS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Massachusetts [Mr. Olver] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. OLVER. Mr. Speaker, I had spoken earlier today and got part way 
through some data that I was trying too give out, so I am going to pick 
up somewhere close to where I had been at that time because I did not 
have time to finish what I had been talking about.
  Let me go back and point out that, in the next few days, we are going 
to be entering into an extremely important debate; and in those next 
couple of days, we are going to learn a good deal about tax fairness in 
America and we are going to learn something about the heart and soul of 
the two major parties, mine, the Democratic Party, and the Republican 
Party, the other party here in this body of Congress.

                              {time}  1915

  We are going to find out who the two parties are willing to defend, 
who each of the parties serves and who each of the parties is willing 
to fight for.
  The debate is going to be a long and very controversial, very 
acrimonious one, I would guess, because it has to do with exactly how 
we reach a balanced budget in this country.
  I thought it would be instructive to speak about something that had 
appeared in USA Today, on the front page of USA Today, the weekend 
edition, where the front page cover story of the weekend edition is 
entitled, ``So How Much Money Does It Take To Be Rich?''
  Basically, it is a story of what it is like, the struggle that 
families at the upper end of the scale have to go through in order to 
become wealthy in this country. They use a number of examples. I would 
just like to mention some things out of this story.
  One of the things that really struck me as quite remarkable is that 
in 1997 there are now 3.5 million American families who have assets of 
$1 million or more. That is 3.5 percent of all families. Only 20 years 
ago, there were only 350,000 families who, in inflation-adjusted 
dollars, had that kind of income.
  In any case, I want to just mention several of the families who were 
given as examples here. One is a gentleman from California who has $1 
million in stocks and bonds, and who lives in a $500,000 house and 
drives a Lexus and takes several expensive vacations, the paper lists 
that he takes several $8,000 vacations each year. He comments that it 
is not yet to the point where he can take a trip to Europe or Canada 
for a whole summer. ``A real millionaire would be able to do such 
things.''
  And then there is another, a couple from Oregon who have about $2 
million in liquid assets, plus $2 million in a 6,000-square-foot city 
house and a beach front home as well. Each year they take vacations. 
The gentleman in that family says with another $2 million in assets, he 
would worry less and travel a bit more and do more charitable work.
  And then there is a family, as an example, who happen to be in South 
Carolina, who sold their personnel staffing company last year and now 
have about $3.5 million in investable assets, plus $3.5 million in 
nonliquid stock, and they own two homes, one a beach home. They own a 
Porche, a BMW, and a $120,000 sailboat. The man in this family says 
that they do not consider themselves rich. They are just not there yet. 
He says he probably would reach that magical mark where he could admit 
that he was rich when he could afford a $5 million jet.
  And then there is another family where the gentleman here had $7 
million worth of stock and bought a $3 million custom built yacht, and 
then a year later he sold his stock for $35 million and bought a $2.5 
million personal jet.
  That is an indication of the people who are in that upper 3.5 
percent, those people who have million-dollar incomes. I use that as an 
indication merely to highlight the fact that the Republicans and the 
Democrats have very different ways that they would give their tax 
reduction.
  The two parties have agreed that we should balance the budget by 
2002. The two parties have agreed what the total amount of tax 
reduction ought to be. What is now the question is how we would 
distribute those tax breaks.
  The fact of the matter is that if we break it down to six families, 
with one of those families being a family that has over $100,000 a year 
in income, and that includes all of the examples that I gave, out of 
those six families, the Republican plan would give one family two-
thirds of all the tax reduction. Those other five families, two of 
those families have incomes of less than $25,000 a year. Under the 
Republican tax plan, they would get exactly zero out of the tax 
reduction program.
  The remaining three families, with incomes lying between $25,000 and 
$100,000, the great middle class in this country; and, by the way, a 
lot of us believe that we are middle class if we have lower income than 
$25,000, and some believe they are in the middle class if they have 
income above $100,000. But that half of the total population between 
$25,000 of income and $100,000 of income would get one-third of the 
total tax cut.
  That is what the argument is about. Because on the part of the 
Democratic proposal as opposed to the Republican proposal, the one 
family which in the Republican plan gets two-thirds of all the tax cut, 
all those families which have over $100,000 of income a year and 
include the hundreds of thousands of millionaires in this country, the 
3.5 million millionaires, that one family under the Democratic plan 
would get 25 percent of the tax reduction. They would get $1,500 on 
average per year.
  The two families at the lower end of the scale, with income less than 
$25,000 a year, and they pay all kinds of taxes, they pay payroll taxes 
and sales taxes and excise taxes and gasoline taxes and all sorts of 
things, they would get, those two, one-third of the American population 
with incomes under $25,000 a year, they would get about 20 percent of 
the tax breaks that come from the Democratic plan.
  And the three, the great middle class between $25,000 an $100,000 of 
income per year, under the Democratic plan that group of half of the 
American population, that group would receive 55 percent of the tax 
reduction that would come from the agreed-on tax plan that both parties 
have agreed, but we are just arguing about who should get it.
  I have to ask America, because this question is going to be asked 
again and again and again over the next few days, whether we should 
give two-thirds of all the tax breaks to the families with more than 
$100,000 of income per year; or whether we should give the middle, the 
great middle class, between $25,000 and $100,000 a year, 55 percent of 
the tax breaks that are to be given under the plans that are going to 
be debated over the next few days; and whether in fact it is fair for 
us to give no tax break at all for the one-third of all Americans who 
have incomes below $25,000 a year but represent working families with 
kids, young families, families and households that are headed by women, 
whether it is fair to give them nothing as the Republican plan would 
do, or whether it is fair to give them some of the tax break as well.

                          ____________________