[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 40 (Wednesday, March 12, 2003)]
[House]
[Page H1779]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       AMERICA'S SHARED SACRIFICE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from California (Mr. George Miller) is recognized for 5 
minutes.
  Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, Congressional Daily 
reports today that in a speech to the bankers, Majority Leader Tom 
Delay said that ``nothing is more important in the face of a war than 
cutting taxes.''
  Not only does that defy the history of great leaders in the Western 
world who understood the necessity of harboring our resources in times 
of uncertainty and times of war, but it also defies what the American 
community expects at a time of war.

                              {time}  1745

  That is the notion of a shared sacrifice. At a time when we are on 
the eve of sending our young men and women in harm's way, we have to 
think about what the contribution is of the rest of us. We understand 
the implications of this war in terms of costs are now said it could 
exceed $100 billion, but we do not know that, because the war has not 
been fought yet. We also understand that there is going to have to be a 
long-term commitment in Iraq after the war, and we do not have any idea 
of what that cost is going to be.
  We know that, in fact, these costs, whatever they are, are not in the 
budget as submitted by the President of the United States, nor are they 
in the budget that is being formulated by the committees in the House 
and the Senate, but what this does suggest is that this tax cut and 
when we add to them the tax cuts that the President has proposed, 
ending with the taxation on dividends by providing huge amounts of tax 
free income for the wealthiest people in this country, what it suggests 
is when the bill comes due for this war, when the $5 trillion debt 
comes due because of the spending and because of the war and because of 
the Bush economy, that one group of Americans will not have to 
participate in that shared sacrifice. Those individuals, because of 
these tax cuts, will live in a tax free world.
  So when the interest mounts on the debt year after year, when we have 
seen in a matter of 2 short years going from almost a $5 trillion 
surplus to a $2 trillion deficit, when we see the deficit reestimated 
into the hundreds of millions of dollars within a matter of months, 
apparently our colleague the gentleman from Texas (Mr. DeLay) and the 
President believe that somehow the wealthiest Americans in this country 
should not share in that sacrifice; they should not be burdened with 
the responsibility of helping to pay that back.
  That will be left to people who earn their income through wages. They 
will continue to be taxed. They will continue to pay high rates of 
Social Security taxes, but the wealthy will not. They will escape that.
  No, that is not the most important thing in the face of war. It 
cannot be cutting taxes. It cannot be how this country works its way 
through that war. It is more importantly how we make the decision to go 
to war. The President has offered a number of rationales for going to 
war. Most of them have been stripped away in the debate that is taking 
place in the international community, in the debate that is taking 
place in this country.
  We have seen evidence offered and the evidence falls apart time and 
again. We have seen connections trying to be made between the war on 
terrorism and Iraq. The evidence has not been sustained, and yet as we 
proceed into that war the one thing that is on the gentleman from 
Texas' (Mr. DeLay) mind is cutting taxes. I think it defies what we 
know this country has done in the past when we have engaged in these 
conflicts and the necessity of what must be done, and I would hope that 
once again we would understand that the burden must be shared across 
American society because there are those who will be called upon to 
make the supreme sacrifice and that will be their lives and their 
futures in pursuit of this war should the President decide to go 
forward.
  Clearly those who are at home must continue to engage in the kind of 
effort to pull this Nation through this period of time, and so we 
cannot embrace the philosophy of the gentleman from Texas (Mr. DeLay) 
that somehow the most important thing that we can do is to cut taxes 
and our most important obligation is somehow to tell the wealthiest 
people in America that they will not share in that sacrifice, they will 
not be there when the bill comes due for future generations.

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