[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 96 (Wednesday, July 9, 1997)]
[House]
[Pages H5013-H5018]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
TAX CUTS
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Christensen). Under the Speaker's
announced policy of January 7, 1997, the gentleman from Mississippi
[Mr. Parker] is recognized for the remaining time before midnight as
the designee of the majority leader.
Mr. PARKER. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to be able to
come before the House and discuss some issues of importance, and I must
tell my colleagues that I have enjoyed listening to my colleagues over
the last hour talk about their view of the tax situation that we have
in this country and what their views are as far as cutting taxes.
I appreciate the fact that they are now in a position and their party
is in a position where they are supporting tax cuts. That means a lot
to me. That is very different than what we had experienced in the past.
But I also think that it is very important that people understand
exactly what we are talking about as far as the tax cuts that the
Republicans are presenting.
Now, my intention tonight is to talk about the death tax and the
repeal of the death tax, but for all my friends on the other side of
the aisle who are discussing tax breaks and how they feel they should
be done, it is very important that we talk about the facts about the
taxes. They are all honorable people. They believe strongly in their
views, and I can appreciate that, but let us talk seriously about what
is exactly happening.
I have to tell my colleagues that I think the average American in
this country understands that people who pay income taxes should get a
tax cut if we are going to have tax cuts. Now, there has been a lot of
talk about this class warfare thing. And I heard some of my colleagues
say we do not want class warfare, we do not want to create any types of
problems as far as the different socioeconomic classes in this country.
Even though they do not intend to do that, that is exactly what they
are doing when they start playing this game as far as taxes. Because
what they do not say is this: In 1972 we had a Republican President by
the name of Richard Nixon, who began a program called reverse income
tax. It has since been renamed EITC, the earned income tax credit. It
was a wealth redistribution program, which was an odd thing for a
Republican to do, but Richard Nixon was not a strong conservative; he
was somewhat liberal in a lot of areas. So he determined that he would
have and present a program that was referred to as reverse income tax.
What they did was they took individuals who were at the poverty level
and that paid no income tax and returned money to them that they had
not paid. That is EITC. Those people who are getting EITC, they were
getting it then and they are still getting it today. That was 25 years
ago. They are still getting the earned income tax credit. People who do
not pay income tax are receiving a check from the Federal Government
for taxes they never paid, and they get that money every year at tax
time.
Now, I am not going to argue that point. Even though I am not a fan
of EITC, I will not argue that point. But we have watched the Federal
Government take money from people for no reason. We have seen the
Federal Government take money and waste it, trillions of dollars. Those
individuals have worked and earned that money and they have sent it to
Washington. And now we have Members of the other party, Members across
the aisle who are saying, hey, what we want to do is we want to give
even more money to those that do not pay income tax.
Well, I think the average American in this country believes that if
they pay income tax, it is time for them to get a break. It is time for
the Federal Government to realize that they have been paying the bill;
that they have been paying income tax for years and they have not
gotten a break. It has been 16 years since they have gotten any type of
break in their income tax.
So let us be clear about what we are talking about. We are talking
about individuals who pay income tax getting a tax break.
{time} 2315
We are not talking about individuals who do not pay income tax. They
are still going to receive their EITC, and people need to realize that.
We need to move away from this point of saying we want the working poor
to get a tax
[[Page H5014]]
break. The individuals that members of the other party are talking
about do not pay income tax. They already receiving EITC, reverse
income tax.
We are talking about the people in this country who take money out of
their pocket every week, out of their children's hands, out of the
needs of their families, and they are sending it to Washington. It is
time for them to get a break.
Let me address one other thing that I heard tonight about the
alternative minimum tax. We in this country have screamed, and yes,
especially the liberals, they have screamed and yelled for years about
businesses in our country not reinvesting. They have talked about
businesses not putting money back into their own companies to buy new
equipment, to modernize, to become more efficient, to create goods and
products that they can sell, and because of that we have seen our
industry base in this nation deteriorate. Now I have heard tell, all of
this, I have heard some of the people in the last aisle were talking
about how terrible it is for the AMT, the alternative minimum tax.
Understand what the chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means did.
He removed, in his bill he removed that part of alternative minimum tax
which dealt with depreciation. What that said was this, and if you are
in business you understand this but those that are not in business do
not.
Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
Mr. PARKER. I yield to the gentleman from Georgia.
Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, is the gentleman from Mississippi [Mr.
Parker] suggesting that most liberals in fact work for government,
therefore, have not the slightest clue what it is like to be in the
business world? Is that what the gentleman is suggesting?
Mr. PARKER. Mr. Speaker, I suggest that most people in this country
do not understand business.
Mr. KINGSTON. Well, if the gentleman would continue to yield, I would
suggest that most of the government employees do not understand what
the small businesses that provide most of the jobs in America are up
against each day because of increased Government bureaucracy and
regulations, and they do not understand why businesses might need a
more favorable tax code in order to create more jobs for working
people.
Mr. PARKER. Let me tell my colleague, the gentleman from Georgia [Mr.
Kingston], an interesting thing. The change in the depreciation on the
alternative minimum tax, let me tell him what it means.
If you have got a business and you reinvest in equipment, you have a
depreciation which is not a gift from the Government, but the
Government allows you to reinvest and you subtract, over the life of
that equipment you subtract the amount of cost that you have invested
so that you can provide more jobs, so that you can produce more
products, so that you become more productive.
The amazing thing about it is that with the alternative minimum tax
on the depreciation side, what has happened through the years is that
even though you get this depreciation, you are in a situation where you
lose that depreciation by paying a minimum tax even though you are
investing in your business.
Now what I find fascinating is you cannot have it both ways. The
liberals in this country do not realize, or even if they realize they
do not want to talk about the situation in which we find ourselves
where companies are penalized for investing in their companies. If they
invest in their companies, they are going to have to pay an alternative
minimum tax. So what they do is, in order to come out ahead, they do
not invest in their company and therefore they do not get the
depreciation. They may pay the alternative minimum tax but they are not
penalized.
Mr. KINGSTON. If the gentleman would yield, and, therefore, they
create less jobs.
Mr. PARKER. And they create less jobs, and also businesses wind up
leaving this country because they cannot make it in the environment in
which they find themselves.
Mr. KINGSTON. But this tax relief plan is about the middle class and
creating jobs, and what we have is, a lot of liberals are against that
and therefore they are against job creation.
Mr. PARKER. Exactly. Now what I wanted to talk about tonight and why
we have all joined together is talking about the death tax, which I
think is the most un-American tax that our Government has ever put on
the American people. Understand, prior to 1916 the Federal Government
had never used the death tax unless we were at war, and they used it
because our exports were not as great, we did not have taxes that we
could collect.
So from a standpoint from national security, we used a death tax in
order to get enough money in order to fight a war and remain free. That
occurred until after the turn of this century in 1916. At that point we
instigated a death tax which was very small, and it has increased over
a period of time and it is now at a level of 55 percent at the top
level.
It does exactly what the President of the United States has said he
does not want to do. The President of the United States, the Honorable
Bill Clinton, has said over and over again, we do not want to have
people who play by the rules, who get up every morning and go to work,
who work hard, to be penalized. We want them to be treated fair. I
agree with him.
But what we have done as a Congress through the years is that we take
people, and they are frugal, they save, they do without the luxuries,
and they turn around and when they die, the Federal Government comes
and says, ``We want what you have saved. We want to take what you have
done your own self, by the sweat of your brow, we want it now. We do
not want you to be able it pass it to your children.''
Mr. RILEY. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
Mr. PARKER. I yield to the gentleman from Alabama.
Mr. RILEY. I thank my good friend, the gentleman from Mississippi
[Mr. Parker] for yielding.
Mr. Speaker, it is interesting that as a small businessman for the
last 32 years, one of the reasons I ran for this office is I am
absolutely convinced that if there is going to be job creation in this
country, it is going to have to come from small business.
When we listen to what the other side said tonight, the way they
portrayed this tax cut, it would lead us to believe that they really do
not believe that most of the jobs that are created in this country come
from small businesses. When we look at the larger corporations and they
are continually downsizing, if we are going to maintain this growth we
have got to do something to stimulate these small businesses.
For 32 years I ran several businesses, and I believe I understand
what most small business people are going through today. One of the
things that I am absolutely convinced of, we have to have a return
on capital, we have to reward risk taking, and I think that is what we
are beginning to see on this side of the aisle.
There are so many things out there that completely complicate and
retard the growth of most small businesses in this country. Until we
return to the philosophy that says we are going to encourage
entrepreneurship, until we return to that philosophy that says we will
reward the person that goes out and takes a risk, I do not believe that
we will ever have the growth that we need in this country.
Whether it is the alternative minimum tax, whether it is the tax rate
or the death tax, the three combine to become a deterrent, and that
deterrent I think is spreading across this country today.
I listened last week to a story that was told in the well about a man
who for 35 years got up every morning, went to work, paid his taxes. He
worked hard. He raised a family. He played by the rules. After 35 years
he wanted to take a break, so he sold his business and paid 28 percent
capital gains tax at the latter part of the year. A few months later he
found out that he had a brain tumor. A few months after that he passed
away.
And after paying 28 percent, his family ended up paying an additional
55 percent to the government. So within a period of almost 9 months, 35
years of work was reduced to approximately 20 percent that his family
had to retain.
Mr. PARKER. Mr. Speaker, would the gentleman yield?
Mr. RILEY. I yield to the gentleman.
[[Page H5015]]
Mr. PARKER. Mr. Speaker, that is one point that people do not
understand. See, people in this country could have a severe problem and
they do not even know they have got it. I listened to people a while
ago in other special orders. They believe what they say and they talk
about capital gains being for the wealthy. But I am going to tell my
colleagues what is interesting. Do the people in this country
understand what capital gains is? I think a lot of them do not.
I will give an example. Take somebody, and let us say they are 25,
country people, and they go out and build them a house, and say they
build this house for $25,000 and they keep that house for 30 years. Now
that house over a period of 30 years has appreciated in value, and let
us say it gets up to $100,000 by today's numbers. Now that is not an
unheard-of figure. In parts of the country it would be more than that.
But my question is, they started out with an initial investment of
$25,000. Now they got a house that is worth $100,000 and they are proud
of. They paid for it and had a small note on it. But when they sell
that house, do they realize that they have to pay capital gains?
The real question is, would they agree with me that the Federal
Government does not deserve one-third of the increase in the house?
They started off with the $25,000 investment and now the house is
$100,000. If they sell that house, does the Federal Government deserve
a check for one-third of $75,000? Do they deserve a check for $25,000?
Well, my personal view is that the Federal Government does not
deserve that. My point is that the Government created inflation, which
increased the value of the house and it deflated dollars. But does the
government deserve that check?
I am going to tell my colleagues, you can take some mighty liberal
people in this country and ask them that question and they will tell
you in a heartbeat, ``I do not think the Federal Government deserves
that.'' That is what we are talking about when we talk about capital
gains. It can hit home mighty quickly.
And in the business, a lot of people have small businesses and they
have no concept of how the Federal Government is going to evaluate that
property when they die. They can have severe economic consequences of
the cost whenever that death occurs and not even know they have a
financial problem.
Mr. RILEY. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
Mr. PARKER. I yield to the gentleman from Alabama.
Mr. RILEY. Mr. Speaker, there is one other primary point that needs
to be made. I believe that we are taking a segment of our society out
of the market, out of being risk takers. A person over 50 years of age
today that makes an investment that will pay back over the next 15 to
20 years, if he is already in this 55 percent tax bracket, what
incentive is there for him to go out and risk 100 percent of his
capital on a venture that may or may not come to fruition? What
incentive is there for him, if the most that he will possibly leave his
children is 20 or 25 or 30 percent, but he has the possibility of
losing 100 percent?
I think that we are taking a segment of our society who want to
remain productive, who want to remain active, I think we are removing
them from being the entrepreneurs that I think this country has to
have.
Mr. PARKER. I agree with the gentleman.
Mr. TALENT. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
Mr. PARKER. I yield to the gentleman from Missouri.
Mr. TALENT. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman getting the time
and doing this special order on taxes. I have been meaning to come over
and have not been able to participate in one of these.
I am just so pleased that we are finally passing bipartisan tax
relief for the American people. And the position that is a bipartisan
position on this bill, as anybody could tell who looked at the vote, is
the affirmative position in favor of this tax relief. We are going to
end up passing this tax bill coming out of conference with support from
both parties.
I believe the President is going to sign it, and I think we are going
to pass this bill because the American people need it and deserve it. I
would like to say what I think about this measure because I think it is
one of the best things we are going to do in this Congress.
We look at the trend of the last generation before the 1994 election,
and I think this is what the American people were so angry about in
1990 and 1992 and 1994. It was a trend where Washington sucked the
money and resources and the power away from the American people to
here, and then used it often to uproot their most basic values and
traditions.
{time} 2330
You know the Bible says where your treasure is, that is where your
heart will be also, and it was clear that the regime that used to run
this place, the treasure they wanted in Washington, because that is
where their heart was. And look what it did to the tax burden of the
American people.
I mean my parents started out in the early 1950s. The average
American family in the early 1950s was paying about 2\1/2\ percent of
their income in Federal taxes, 2\1/2\ percent. Today that same average
family in my district earning in the mid-$40,000s pay about 25 percent
total of their income in Federal taxes. If they were paying at 1970
levels, that family earning $45,000 a year today would have $4,000 a
year more in disposable income.
And then we got the naysayers and the quibblers. No matter what tax
bill we come up with, tax cut bill, they do not like it because they
basically do not want to cut the taxes for the American people.
Now the heart and center of this bill, and I wish it could be more,
and I wish we could do across-the-board tax relief for everybody. Bob
Dole lost the last election, so we cannot do that. But the President
has agreed to something that I think is a substantial step forward, and
the heart and center of this bill is a $500-per-child tax credit.
And I hope the American people understand what we are talking about
is $500 off the bottom line of your taxes for every child you have got.
You got three children, it is $1,500 less in your Federal taxes.
So if you are again in that family paying, earning in the mid-
forties, and in Federal income taxes you are paying 7, $8,000, this
amounts to about a 15-percent income tax cut for you. It is very, very
substantial.
And the other side argues, people who do not like this thing, they
got to come up with some reason to oppose it, and they do not want to
come out and say we are opposed to tax cuts so they say, well, your tax
relief is for the wealthy. It is for everybody but the very wealthy. I
cannot understand how they even say that. The very wealthy do not get
it. Everybody else gets it, and they do not want to get it, and if you
are earning above a certain income level, what is it, $75,000 in the
bill, you do not get the $500-per-child tax credit.
Mr. PARKER. I think it is fascinating that the very wealthy in this
country, they hire their lawyers, they have their tax accountants, and
I must tell you they do not pay a lot of taxes because they go through
all kind of things in order to get around it. It is the middle-class
income taxpayer that is burdened. He is the one, she is the one, that
is going to work every day and having to pay the taxes. It is not the
very wealthy. The very wealthy, they are going to take care of
themselves. Just like the estate side, the very wealthy corporations,
they do not worry about this. There are ways around a lot of this when
you are large enough. The small business person, the small farmer,
those are the individuals that are having the real problem.
Mr. TALENT. Mr. Speaker, as my colleagues know, I chair the Committee
on Small Business, and I am taking up a lot of your time, and I
appreciate your indulgence, but I did want to talk briefly about the
death tax because we have held hearings on this in the Committee on
Small Business, and the gentleman is absolutely correct. The large
publicly-held corporations, they do not care about the death tax. It is
the small family business, people who have done, as you were saying
before so eloquently, who have done what we want them to do. They have
worked, they have saved, they invested. They do not go out to eat a
lot, they do not take a
[[Page H5016]]
lot of trips. They have started a family business. And something like
60 percent of family businesses in this country are seriously adversely
affected by the death tax. Many of them have to liquidate in order to
pay the death tax.
There was a lady who testified at a hearing we held in St. Louis, my
district, on this issue, and that woman almost broke down in tears
describing what she and her brother were trying to do to save their
family business from the IRS, the business their father had built up
and worked his whole life to preserve and passed on to them. And then
the government, swooping in and trying to grab it from them.
And I would say to the gentleman, what happens to the employees of
the family business when the business has to liquidate or sell out to a
big company in order to pay the estate tax? Who gets laid off? It is
the employees.
It is a tax that makes no sense. We are writing this bill to do
something about it. I wish we could do more than we are doing. The
gentleman is doing a service in having this special order, and I really
appreciate your yielding some time to me because this is a good bill, I
believe we are going to pass this bill. It is a bill the American
people have needed and wanted for a long time, and again it is a
question of where is your faith.
I mean if you want the resources of the country to go to Washington,
you are going to be opposed to this bill, and that is the reason for
this rear guard desperate action fought against every tax-cut bill we
come up with because these people want to preserve the power and
resources and size and scope of the Federal Government. But I do not
think they are going to win in this one. I think we are going to get it
and the----
Mr. PARKER. Let me tell you one thing. I have watched the liberals
talk about how much they love tax cuts now. Now they control the House
over the last 16 years. They had a lot of opportunities. We could have
had tax cuts, and believe me, conservatives, the Democrats and
Republicans would have voted for it in a heart beat.
But you know, none of those proposals ever got through committee,
never got through subcommittee, never got through the Committee on
Rules, never got to the floor, so it is somewhat disingenuous for them
to stand up and talk about how much they love tax cuts when they had
plenty of time to do it. They just did not quite do it.
Mr. KINGSTON. If the gentleman would yield, if you will remember, the
President ran on the platform in 1992 of a middle-class tax cut, and
although he had a Democrat Senate and Congress, not one bill was
introduced to give middle-class tax relief. However, reaching across
the aisle, reaching over the hard left and the Democrat Party, he has
found a partner to work with. In a bipartisan basis we have a middle-
class tax cut, and if you will look at this chart, 76 percent of the
tax relief goes to people and households making below $75,000. That is
the vast area right here.
Now what is not shown on this chart is that if you are making
$200,000, 1.2 percent of the tax relief goes to you. The majority of it
clearly goes to hard middle-class working families. I know the
gentleman from Michigan----
Mr. HOEKSTRA. Just been fascinated listening. I think there are a
number of things that I would like to build off that some of you have
talked about.
No. 1, I think we want to personalize this. What does it actually
mean to the average family? You are talking about the families with
three children, $1,500 more per year. That is $30 per week in an
increase in take-home pay with a per-child tax credit, $30 per week,
not gross, where the Federal Government comes in and takes their share
again, $30 per week increase in take-home pay.
And we talk about the death tax and the reduction in the capital
gains tax. We are talking about creating an economy that will create
more jobs. More jobs, more opportunity, greater investment, greater
investment which will enable our workers to be working in the highest
value-added jobs in the world, and when they are adding more value than
any other workers in the world, it will enable them to continue to be
the highest-paid workers in the world so that they can maintain the
highest standard of living.
We are going to kick off a project, we just got approval yesterday,
which we call the American Worker at a Crossroads, which is going to
examine these issues on a longer-term basis. What kinds of things in
addition to the kinds of tax cuts that we are proposing, and we are
going to pass this month; what other kinds of things do we need to do
as we take a look at labor law? As we take a look at the billions of
dollars that we spend on job training? Are we getting the kind of
impact, are we creating the economy, are we creating the necessary
framework to make sure that after the year 2000 our economy is still
going to be the envy of the rest of the world?
Today we work under and we have an economy, we have a work force, we
have an employee management labor relations model that is based on
decades-old labor law. Is that still the best framework to rein in our
workers? Or are there better ways to do that? Are there new
opportunities with a different kind of work force, the different kinds
of jobs that they are engaging in, the high-tech? So that is going to
be a project that we will begin that will build on these tax changes.
Tax changes create the environment to encourage investment. Changes
in labor law, changes in Federal spending will enable us to better
equip our workers to be the best and the most talented workers in the
world. We combine those two things, and we can ensure a great economy
for our kids and for our future. That is what it is about.
Mr. PARKER. I must tell the gentleman the best social program in the
world that has ever been invented is a good job, and one of the
problems we have got in this country: When we penalize companies, when
we penalize small business so that they cannot provide those jobs, we
are hurting every worker in this Nation, because once you hurt one, it
spreads like a disease, it hurts everybody; because if you are
penalizing one small business out there, you can bet your bottom dollar
that other small businesses are hurting too.
Now you know we talk about the tax load that we have in this country.
Right now we pay between 38 and 40 cents out of every dollar that every
worker in this country makes on average for Federal, State and local
taxes. Now when you add the regulations, onerous regulation, that the
Federal Government has put on a lot of these companies, you can add
another 10 to 12 percent on top of that.
So all of a sudden people are taking home 50 cents out of every
dollar they make. Now that is sad in and of itself, but we have turned
this thing around. I feel very good about what we, as the Republican
Party, have done and the direction that this country is now going. I
mean we even have the liberals talking about tax cuts. I find that
fascinating. I do not believe that some of them believe what they are
saying, but I like the fact that they are saying it. Whether they mean
it or not is fine. I do not really care. What I want, I want to get the
tax cuts there.
I have listened to people tonight talk about the tax increase, the
largest tax increase in the history of this country in 1993 as being
what turned us around. Now I am glad they want to take credit, and I
will be glad to give them some credit for stuff if they want it, and I
do not care, I do not care who gets the credit. But let us not forget
that we are the ones that cut out over 280 programs in the last
Congress. I mean we stopped it. Let us not forget that we saved $53
billion in money that would have been spent if it had not been for us
over the last year.
So we have got a low figure out there, and it is decreasing all the
time as far as the deficit. But the business community in this country,
the small business community in this country which creates the jobs, is
now having confidence in the Congress in knowing that we are moving in
the right direction and we are going to continue to move in the right
direction.
Mr. RILEY. If the gentleman will yield, I think you are exactly
right. During the past week when I was at home, I had several town
meetings, and the one thing people in my district do understand is that
as families we are moving in the right direction.
You know, a lot of the tax policies we talk about and a lot of the
depreciations is complicated, and they do not understand, but the one
thing they do understand today is that we are talking about tax cuts,
not tax increases. It
[[Page H5017]]
is a very easy concept when you can talk to a worker and say if you got
two children, next year you will have a thousand dollars more in your
pocket than you did this year. That is a concept that I think our side
of the aisle can take a tremendous amount of pride in.
And as my friend from Georgia indicated a minute ago, for anyone to
say that this bill is for the rich or big business, how they do that
and look at this chart where it is a proven fact that 76 percent of all
of the tax cuts are going to the people who deserve it and who
absolutely probably need it more than anyone else in this country. The
person who is working two jobs and three jobs, doing whatever it takes,
that is the people that we have to get this tax cut for.
Mr. KINGSTON. If the gentleman is finished with his point, I wanted
to add on that a little bit, because one of the disappointing things is
that the President and many of the liberals want to actually give the
$500-per-child tax credit to folks who do not pay taxes.
Mr. PARKER. If the gentleman will yield.
Mr. KINGSTON. It is confusing to me, too.
Mr. PARKER. Now they pay taxes. Now they pay FICA taxes, they pay
Social Security taxes, but they do not pay income tax. And what the
President is proposing is that he wants to give an income tax break to
people who do not pay income taxes.
Now that is very important because income taxes, if you are going to
give an income tax break, you should give a break to people who pay
income taxes. They are already receiving, for those people that the
President is talking about, he is talking about individuals who get
EITC, the earned income tax credit. They are already getting a tax
refund for taxes they have not paid.
I am not arguing that point, and I do not think we should argue that
point. It is in the law, it has been there for 25 years. The point is
that we want to give people who pay income taxes and every person by
the way who pays income taxes in this country, they know who they are.
I do not have to go and point them out.
{time} 2345
That individual, he knows on April 15 when he has written, he or she
has written that check, they know that they have paid income taxes to
the Federal Government. They know when they look at that check stub
when they have paid withholding taxes to the Federal Government. It is
not hard to decipher who these individuals are. Those are the people we
are trying to give an income tax break to. So that point needs to be
made over and over again, so people can understand it.
Mr. KINGSTON. The gentleman is correct. Let me do what the gentleman
from Michigan [Mr. Hoekstra] has suggested and put a face on this. Here
is a single woman, and I am going to call her Mrs. Smith, this is a
real person in my district who has a 14-year-old and a 16-year-old
child.
Under the Republican plan, she will get a $1,000 tax credit. Under
the Clinton proposal she will get zero, because children over 12 years
old do not get a tax credit, or their parents are not entitled. But
instead, that $1,000 of income tax credit that she would be receiving
goes to somebody who is not paying income tax; who in many cases is
somebody whose children are getting WIC benefits, the nutritional
program; possibly getting Medicaid; free health insurance; possibly
getting food stamps, in addition to what they are getting; and probably
qualifying for any number of college education scholarships, which are
very, very important.
But the point is, and the gentleman has said this, that for the poor
there are a lot of benefits already. Our tax plan does not transfer any
benefit plan from the poor to give to the rich whatsoever. But instead,
the President is proposing to take from single mothers child tax
credits, single working mother child tax credits, and giving it to
people who are not working.
Under the Republican plan, 41 million children and their parents will
get tax relief. Under the Clinton plan, only 30 million children will
get tax relief. That is a huge difference for America's middle class
working families.
Mr. PARKER. Mr. Speaker, let me mention one thing, because we tend in
this country over and over again to downcast the IRS. It is an easy
thing to do, I guess even in Biblical times the people did not think
very highly of the tax collector. But in this country there are certain
things that we need to understand.
Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, on that point, I think it was Jesus who
amazed the people by saying Nicodemus, the tax collector, would not be
in fact going to hell after all. That was the first time that concept
was introduced biblically, I believe.
Mr. PARKER. The point that I want to make is that I feel sorry
sometimes for IRS employees. They are not doing what they invent. We as
a Congress mandate to the IRS what they will do and how they will work.
It is our fault as a legislative body that we do not correct the
problems, and that we do not put the IRS into a situation where they
can be more user-friendly, and that they can do their job better.
We are the ones that tell the IRS when a person dies, you will go and
you will collect the death tax. We are the ones who go in and tell
them, you will go into this business and you will do certain things.
You will padlock the door in a certain way. We do that.
So I think I want to make sure that all the IRS employees in this
country realize that there are some of us in this body who realize it
is our fault and not theirs on conducting their business. We need to
accept the responsibility, and we need to change their orders so that
they can do their job in a much more efficient way.
Mr. TALENT. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman makes a good point. The IRS
has been responding to the signals that its political masters for a
generation were sending it. I think what the IRS is guilty of is not
understanding that the political masters have changed now, and the
signals are changing. They need to change as well. We no longer want
them to ratchet every possible dollar they can get out of the American
people, regardless of how fair or unfair the tactic may be.
I wanted to make one other comment. I agree completely with the
comments of my friend, the gentleman from Georgia, about the relative
merits of the tax plan. I do think it is unfortunate that we have to
argue over who gets what tax relief here. I just want to point out the
reason is because this tax bill is not as big as we all wanted it to
be. It was not as big. It is not as big as the tax bill we had in the
Contract With America. It is not because the President did not want it
that big. He did not want as much tax relief for the American people,
so now we have to argue over who gets what.
But we have less of a tax bill, and we have it so we can support a
Government growing, even under this plan, and it is a good plan and I
support it, but a Government growing at over 4 percent a year, at twice
the rate of inflation. If we had cut the Government back to the rate of
inflation, we would have more than enough money to provide tax relief
for the American people, for all of these people.
Mr. PARKER. If the gentleman will continue to yield, Mr. Speaker, the
one thing, I have to look positively at what is going on. Even though
the tax cuts that we are giving are not as great as they should be, I
think they are kind of like popcorn. You just cannot eat just a little.
When the American people just get a touch of what it is like for the
Federal Government to get their hand out of their pocket just a little
bit and they are able to keep more of their money, they will want more.
I think it will feed on itself.
Mr. HOEKSTRA. If the gentleman will continue to yield, Mr. Speaker, I
think it is important for the American people to recognize the story
that was in the Washington Post today. We are in a position to be able
to provide tax cuts because of the restraints that we have put on
spending over the last few years. The economy is good, revenues are
growing.
We may be in a position to get to a surplus budget much earlier than
what we thought. Then we will be able to start having some additional
wonderful debates here about what do we do with the surplus. I think we
will be arguing about are we going to use it to pay back the money in
the trust funds, the money we have borrowed out of the trust funds? Are
we going to be able to give additional tax breaks?
[[Page H5018]]
I do not think any of us are going to be here arguing that we should
use it for increased Federal spending, but how are we going to get it
back to the American people, how are we going to pay ourselves, get
ourselves out of debt, and how are we going to give this money back to
the American people from where it came originally?
So this tax package is in a context of continuing to make progress in
getting to a surplus budget. We have a lot of things moving in the
right direction.
Mr. PARKER. To my friend who sits on the Committee on the Budget,
does he remember when we had Chairman Alan Greenspan, Chairman of the
Federal Reserve, who came before our committee? One thing that he said
which had struck me, and it has stayed with me over years now, he said
the American people have not experienced the benefits of a surplus
economy since World War II.
I think it is significant that we have not had a surplus economy
since we instituted a death tax and the income tax and everything, all
the other taxes there. But that is what the American people need to be
looking for, for their children, their grandchildren, for themselves in
the outyears, is having the benefits of a surplus economy, where our
economy, which is so strong, so mighty, it is the most mighty economy
that has ever been on the face of the Earth, and I must tell the
Members, it is very difficult to destroy, because we have had
politicians in this country for decades that have done everything in
their power to destroy it, and they have not done it. They have not
been able to. It is that powerful.
But if we allow that surplus economy to work and do what it is
supposed to do, and we release the ingenuity and the innovation of
small business, if we just release that power and let people have the
freedom to do what only entrepreneurs can do, people will receive
benefits from that for generations to come. We will change the face of
this Nation.
Mr. RILEY. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will continue to yield, I
think it does one other thing. I think this tax package, probably as
much as anything, sends a message that if you work hard, you will be
rewarded. I think that is what this country was founded on. That is
what made us the greatest country in the world, is that we need to do
everything we can to increase incentives.
I think that is what it does. It sends a message to the American
people once and for all that we are going to continue, and as the
gentleman said a moment ago, we will have a debate hopefully within the
next few months or the next year on how we are going to take some of
this extra money that could go to a variety of different programs, and
I hope one of the things we do is continue this path of cutting taxes,
whether it is death taxes or income taxes, whatever, because the more
we use these tax cuts as an incentive, I think the more it stimulates
our economy. In all reality, that is what is going to drive this
economy for the next few years.
{time} 2355
Mr. HOEKSTRA. Mr. Speaker, I think it is interesting. I have two of
my colleagues who came here in January 1993, the three of us came here.
What we were faced with was raising taxes, growing rapidly the size of
government, nationalizing health care, no concern about the deficit,
deficits in the $200 to $300 billion range as far as we could see. It
is really amazing.
I think if we would reflect back to where we thought, I still
remember walking about across the street saying, how can we be part of
this? Four and a half years later we are getting close to a surplus. We
are cutting taxes. This is a sea change. As my colleague said, this is
like popcorn. We are debating the right issues.
This is not enough right now, but we have a much different debate
than what we had in 1993.
Mr. TALENT. Mr. Speaker, the perspective is totally different. The
last budget agreement, the budget plan, big increase in taxes, big new
burst of domestic spending, deficits as far as the eye could see,
passed on a totally partisan basis.
Now we have a bipartisan budget agreement with tax relief, a
plausible plan to balance the budget. We may do it sooner than we are
expecting to do it, with real tax relief for the American people and
restraint on domestic spending, a total sea change.
There are the naysayers here, the old establishment type Members who
are not going gently into that good night. They are the ``I want tax
relief but'' Members. I want tax relief but not this plan. I want tax
relief, but it does not give enough to this. I want tax relief but not
now, or I want tax relief but I want it to end after 5 years.
I just want to say, Mr. Speaker, I hope everybody needs to be aware,
when they hear that ``I want tax relief but,'' make sure your wallet is
still in your pocket. What they are trying to do is to keep that money
for the Federal Government.
Mr. PARKER. There are the liberals in this body, Mr. Speaker, who
will do anything in their power to make this a class battle. They get
their power from turning class against class. We know who they are. We
know the games that they are playing. Makes for great sound bites. Tax
break for the wealthy. Capital gains for the wealthy.
I hear this over and over again, but I have a lot of confidence in
the American people. The American people, you can fool them sometimes,
but I am going to say, they get enough of it. They have had 40 years of
sitting through this thing, of watching it, of being hit by it, of
having to pay the bills.
They are basically sick and tired of being sick and tired. They want
it changed.
Mr. KINGSTON. Mr. Speaker, my friend from Missouri is about to kill
me if I do not correct my earlier statement, that it was Zacchaeus and
not Nicodemas, Luke, chapter 19. I stand corrected.
I want to also say to the gentleman from Michigan, when we came here
it was socialized medicine. It was the largest tax increase in history.
It was expansion of the Hatch Act. It was motor voter. Everything was
big government, big government this. We have stopped the ball from
rolling to the left. We have stopped the onward intrusion of the big
government.
Have we stopped it as abruptly as we would like to? No. But we are
moving in that direction. We believe this tax relief bill is the first
and very, very significant step in returning to the American middle
class people money that is theirs, that the government should not be
taking from them.
Mr. PARKER. Let me close by saying, I want to thank my colleagues the
gentleman from Missouri [Mr. Talent], the gentleman from Georgia [Mr.
Kingston], the gentleman from Michigan [Mr. Hoekstra], and the
gentleman from Alabama [Mr. Riley] for participating in this special
order.
We will do another special order next Wednesday night. It is
important that the American people understand what we are doing in a
very rational and a very logical way, because the American people, when
they understand, they will agree. In their hearts they know that we are
doing the right thing, but they hear so much verbiage. They hear so
much rhetoric. They hear so much hyperbole that sometimes they sit back
and go, who can we believe.
They have heard so much junk through the years from Washington that
they do not know who to believe. We are giving that information. I
thank the gentlemen for participating. I am looking forward to having
another special order next Wednesday night and being able to bring more
facts to the American people and to our colleagues so they understand
exactly what we are doing.
{time} 2358
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