[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 96 (Wednesday, July 9, 1997)]
[House]
[Pages H5004-H5005]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         FAMILY ECONOMIC INCOME

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from New Jersey [Mr. Saxton] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. SAXTON. Mr. Speaker, about a month ago, when we were leading up 
to the debate that we had and the successful passage of the tax reform 
bill, the treasury department kicked off a major debate in this country 
by releasing some statistics, suggesting that the congressional tax 
relief bills were tilted toward the rich. In other words, the tax 
relief bill that we were passing was going to give larger tax breaks to 
the rich than it was to the middle class.
  And, of course, Secretary Rubin made a big point that we were not 
doing enough to take care of the less well off. As we began to look 
into it, and this is not new news anymore, but as we began to look into 
the situation, we found out that one of the things Secretary Rubin did 
was to fail to report his findings in a fashion that the American 
people could understand.
  And I guess I would have to conclude that Secretary Rubin did that on 
purpose. Because instead of talking about family income in a way that 
we would all normally talk about it, either in someone's annual salary 
as it is reported, when somebody comes home and they are sitting around 
the family dinner table and their little boy or girl says to dad, ``How 
much do we make?'' and dad says, ``Well, my salary is $40,000,'' or 
``My salary is $55,000,'' or whatever it is, we all understand that. Or 
we can also understand that when we fill out our income tax form each 
year, we get some deductions and we get down to what we really pay 
taxes on under the current tax code. That is called adjusted gross 
income. The American people and I and everybody else can understand 
what that is.
  But Secretary Rubin computed family income by using a term called 
family economic income. That means he took the gross salary that 
everybody made, not adjusted gross income, but the total amount, and 
added in a number of other income factors to that which Americans do 
not normally relate to as income to their family.
  For example, let us say a family makes $60,000 and let us say they 
live in a house that is worth $150,000. Well, the economic rental 
income of that house, now remember they have a mortgage and they are 
paying the mortgage and they are paying their taxes on the house, but 
if it is worth $150,000 and the rental value of that house if it were 
on the market for rent would be maybe $1,200 a month, Secretary Rubin 
took $1,200 a month and multiplied it by 12 and said, OK, let us see, 
that is $12,000 plus another $2,400, that is $14,400 a year that the 
family has in family economic income. So you take the salary level that 
the family earns, say it is $60,000, and add $14,400 to it and that is 
part of family economic income.
  And if you are like most people have some kind of retirement plan, 
the buildup of money in the retirement plan also became part of family 
economic income. And so, as was pointed out by the gentleman from 
Georgia [Mr. Kingston] just a few minutes ago, a family that had an 
income of $50,000 or $60,000 could look at Secretary Rubin's charts and 
find out that they

[[Page H5005]]

make $85,000 or $90,000 a year, when, in fact, nothing could be further 
from the truth.
  Now this was done I think as a way to skew the numbers to make it 
look like the Republican tax plan actually gave bigger tax breaks to 
people who were more well off than they did to people who were less 
well off. So when we began to analyze this, we used the more normal 
numbers that would be used by most anyone who is thinking about how 
much families make, and this chart depicts what we found when we looked 
at how the tax code the new tax plan will affect taxpayers in various 
economic groups.
  For example, here is the lowest 20 percent of taxpayers on this end 
and the highest 20 percent of taxpayers on the other end. Now, 63 
percent of the American people, under the current tax code, 63 percent 
are in the highest tax bracket, the highest 20 percent. And under the 
new tax plan, guess what, there is no change whatsoever in that number, 
continues to say that 63 percent of the people are still in the top tax 
bracket.
  I will just conclude, Mr. Speaker, by saying, as we move on down, we 
see very clearly that there is no change whatsoever in any of the 
numbers as it relates to people who pay taxes and how much they pay 
under the new tax plan, it is the same identical amount as the old.

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