[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 101 (Wednesday, July 16, 1997)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7616-S7617]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




    EXPLANATION OF SELECTED VOTES TO THE TAXPAYER RELIEF ACT OF 1997

 Mr. ABRAHAM. Mr. President, now that the Taxpayer Relief Act 
of 1997

[[Page S7617]]

has passed the Senate, I wanted to take a few moments to discuss 
several of the more important votes that took place.
  The first of these was the Daschle amendment. This amendment 
constituted a comprehensive substitute to the Finance Committee plan, 
but I believe it failed to live up to the spirit of the budget 
agreement between congressional leadership and the Clinton 
administration.
  The Daschle substitute would have provided only $68.5 billion in net 
tax cuts to the American people--not the $85 billion called for in the 
budget agreement. An $85 billion tax cut represented less than 1 
percent of the total tax burden over the next 5 years, yet the Daschle 
substitute would have reduced that relief by almost 20 percent. The 
Daschle amendment reduced the $500 per child tax credit to $350. It 
excluded millions of tax-paying families with teenage children from 
receiving any tax relief at all, including as many as 50,000 families 
in Michigan. And it drastically reduced the capital gains tax relief 
for seniors and small businessmen. For these reasons, I opposed it.
  There were several amendments targeted at the Finance Committee's 
$500 per child tax credit. The Kerry amendment would have made the 
child tax credit refundable against FICA tax payments. To pay for 
refundability, the amendment would have reduced the income levels at 
which the credit is phased-out.
  Mr. President, I support making the family tax cuts in this 
legislation broader to include lower-income families, but I oppose 
taking tax relief away from middle-class families to do so. The Kerry 
amendment would have eliminated the $500 credit for millions of middle-
class families who pay almost 40 percent of their income in taxes while 
redirecting that relief towards families with no income tax burden and 
actually receive money from the Federal Government.
  A similar amendment, offered by Senator Landrieu, would have 
permitted families receiving payments under the earned income credit to 
also receive full $500 per child tax credits. Senator Landrieu would 
have offset these new payments by reducing the allowable family income 
from $110,000 to $75,000. Once again, this amendment would have taken 
relief away from taxpaying families. While I support giving tax relief 
to families of all incomes, it is not right to take tax relief away 
from families earning as little as $75,000 to make it possible.
  An amendment which I supported was offered by Senator Gramm to 
provide the full $500 per child tax credit to parents of children ages 
13 to 17. Under the Finance bill, the full child credit would only go 
to those parents who deposit it into a qualified tuition savings plan 
for their children. For those parents who are unable to afford such a 
plan, or whose children do not go to college, they would only qualify 
for a reduced tax credit. I disagree with this approach, and supported 
the Gramm amendment. The whole purpose of the $500 per child credit is 
to let families keep more of what they earn so they can spend that 
money on their priorities, not the Federal Governments. In Michigan, 
thousands of families have children who choose not to go to college. I 
do not believe they should be penalized for making that choice.
  Senator Jeffords offered an amendment to make the existing dependent 
care tax deduction refundable. I support making childcare available to 
more parents, but I am concerned that the Jeffords amendment would 
create a bias against small, neighborhood child care givers and towards 
large, accredited facilities. Specifically, the Jeffords amendment 
would give families a larger tax credit for sending their children to 
an accredited facility than if they chose a smaller, unaccredited 
caregiver. I believe this is a poorly thought out provision which 
create an unjustified intrusion by the Federal Government into the 
child care decisions of parents. Rather than allow parents to make 
their own child care decisions free from a biased tax code, this 
amendment would have placed parents in a position of losing part of 
their tax credit just because they chose the neighbor they know and 
trust, rather than the stranger working at the large, accredited child 
care center. For that reason, I opposed the amendment.
  Another amendment I opposed was the Kennedy amendment to raise the 
cigarette excise tax by an additional 23 cents. Senator Kennedy's 
intention was to use the $12 billion raised by this tax to provide 
additional funding for children's health insurance.
  Mr. President, I support the underlying bill's provision to ensure 
that deserving children get adequate funding to meet the health 
insurance challenge. The Finance Committee bill, as amended by the 
Senate, would spend $24 billion over the next 5 years, or about $1,600 
per child to address this issue. Senator Kennedy's amendment would 
provide an additional $12 billion over 5 years for health insurance 
coverage. Mr. President, I believe it is incumbent upon Senator Kennedy 
and other supporters of this higher level of funding to demonstrate how 
these sums could be effectively spent to combat a problem that the 
Clinton administration has agreed could be solved with a lower funding 
level. In my opinion, Senator Kennedy failed to make that case, and for 
that reason I opposed the Kennedy amendment.
  One amendment which I supported was offered by Senator Durbin to 
provide the self-employed with the ability to deduct 100 percent of 
their health insurance costs. I believe the current policy toward self-
employed Americans is unfair and discriminatory and I supported the 
Durbin amendment in an effort to ensure that this issue was addressed 
by the conference committee. While the Durbin amendment failed on a 
point of order, a subsequent Nickles amendment to provide 100 percent 
deductibility by the year 2007 was adopted and will likely be made part 
of the bill sent to the President. I supported that amendment as well, 
and look forward to seeing this provision made law.
  A final effort which I supported was the McCain point of order 
against the creation of an intercity passenger rail fund. My vote in 
support of Senator McCain should not be interpreted as a vote against 
Amtrak. Instead, I opposed this fund because it is designed to skirt 
the existing budget process and create a bias for Amtrak funding and 
against other Federal programs, such as veterans' programs, community 
health centers, and other essential services. In my opinion, the 
proponents of the Amtrak fund have failed to demonstrate why Amtrak 
funding should be given a special place of prominence among all other 
federal programs. Next year, the Federal Government will take in $1.7 
trillion in tax revenues. If Amtrak funding is a priority, I am 
confident that sufficient money can be found in the budget without 
resorting to tax increases.

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