[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 101 (Wednesday, July 16, 1997)]
[House]
[Page H5307]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                  REPUBLICAN TAX PLAN FAVORS THE RICH

  (Mr. PALLONE asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, Democrats have been saying for some time 
that the Republican tax plan favors the rich at the expense of working 
Americans. Republicans have tried over and over again to deny the 
truth, but the media and the American people are catching on.
  I want to make reference to sections in an editorial in today's 
Washington Post entitled ``Tax Trash.'' It says the Republicans have 
written a tax bill tilted heavily toward the better off. The Democrats, 
led by the President, have rightly called them on it.
  The Republicans, in turn, have adopted a new technique. Rather than 
argue, as they may have done in the past, about the virtues of the 
bill, they engage in distortion. The people who wrote this bill are not 
defending its distributional consequences, they are denying them.
  The plain facts are that the bill, over time, would not just mainly 
benefit the better off but would cost the Government revenues it cannot 
afford. The bill is certainly written in such a way as to make the 
revenue loss look small at first and then it soars.
  It is not just the Treasury Department that says so. The 
Congressional Research Service and the vast majority of other analysts 
are saying the same thing.
  Mr. Speaker, we should listen to the Washington Post because it says 
it all about what the other side is doing.

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