[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 53 (Wednesday, April 2, 2003)]
[House]
[Page H2670]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          AMERICAN PARITY ACT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Oregon (Mr. DeFazio) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DeFAZIO. Madam Speaker, tomorrow the United States House of 
Representatives will vote to borrow $75 billion as an emergency 
supplemental: some of the funds to support our troops in Iraq; some for 
large new discretionary or a slush fund to be made available to the 
President, the Secretary of Defense and others; some $10 billion in 
foreign aid, military assistance; $2.4 billion for Iraq itself, and now 
$700 million of that is humanitarian assistance. But the rest is to 
help rebuild Iraq, and I will go into that in a moment.
  But the thing is that the House is going to vote to borrow this 
money. We are not going to revisit the tax cuts. We are headed toward a 
record deficit this year; but we will not revisit the tax cuts, more 
than half of which in this House of Representatives are targeted toward 
the wealthiest in this country, those who earn over $273,000 a year, an 
average of $90,000 for every millionaire in those tax cuts. God forbid 
we should ask them to help contribute to this emergency, that we should 
reduce their tax cuts and not borrow this money but collect the funds 
from those who can afford to help contribute. But that is where this 
House of Representatives is headed.
  The gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Emanuel) and I hope to offer an 
amendment. We will go to the Committee on Rules. I expect we will be 
denied, but our amendment in principle is very simple, and that is to 
say if the United States House of Representatives is going to borrow 
$1.7 billion to begin to implement contracts, which I have here, from 
the Federal Government of the United States to provide universal health 
care in Iraq, which of course 44 million Americans have no health 
insurance whatsoever, tens of thousands of Oregonians, to rebuild their 
highways and bridges, and we have a $4 billion bridge problem in 
Oregon, about a $270 billion bridge problem nationwide, we are going to 
borrow money to do that in Iraq. We are going to borrow to build 6,000 
schools in Iraq when we do not have enough money to educate our kids 
here, and we are going to borrow money for a number of other things: 
airports, sewer, water, and a whole host of infrastructure. But guess 
what, there is not a penny in this bill for the economic recovery of 
the United States of America.
  I lost another 800 jobs in my district today. Where is our 
assistance? Where is our economic stimulus? It is not in the tax cuts 
for the wealthy and trickle-down. It is not in borrowing more funds to 
fund this, driving us further in debt and ultimately driving up 
interest rates in this country. There is a more responsible way to 
approach this, and there is also a way to approach it so that we are 
responsible to the American people. Fund this by reducing the tax cuts 
or eliminating the tax cuts.
  The United States of America is at war. This would be the first time 
in the history of our Nation that we have reduced taxes in a time of 
war, and we are reducing taxes at a time when we are headed already for 
a record deficit. We are looking at doubling the national debt probably 
in the next decade. We are going to have the economic profile of 
Argentina with a $500 billion trade deficit on top of this, but we are 
going to borrow the money.
  And what are our kids going to come home to if we do not invest here 
in the United States of America? They are going to come home to the 
bill, not in the first couple of years they come home; but when they 
get a little bit older, they are going to come home to that bill. That 
bill is going to come home to them. And they may well not come home to 
good jobs because we are failing to stimulate the economy. We could act 
much more responsibly in this body in approaching this situation, but I 
fear we will not.
  But I will go to the Committee on Rules. I will pretend that this is 
on the up and up and ask them to allow us a vote on the American Parity 
Act. That is to say, for every dollar we spend on health care, on 
schools, bridges, highways, water infrastructure, all needs well 
documented in our Nation and in Iraq, there should be a comparable 
dollar sent down to the States; and preferably this money should not 
come from borrowing. It should come from reducing tax cuts to the 
wealthiest among us who could at least do a little bit to help share 
this burden.

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