[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 66 (Tuesday, May 6, 2003)]
[House]
[Pages H3664-H3665]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        SINKING AMERICAN ECONOMY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Wynn) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. WYNN. Madam Speaker, now that we have achieved victory in Iraq, 
the country will refocus its attention on matters close to home, 
specifically our sinking economy. Unfortunately, victory in war does 
not necessarily translate into success in domestic economy. In terms of 
the economy, we have been treated to a cycle of failure by this 
administration and my Republican colleagues. Consider that unemployment 
is now up to 6 percent. There has been a decline in the length of the 
workweek, meaning more people are working fewer hours. Manufacturing 
workers were hurt particularly hard last month. Factory payrolls fell 
by 95,000, the 33rd consecutive monthly decline.
  According to Jerry Jasinowski, President of the National Association 
of Manufacturers, ``Since July 2000 manufacturing has lost 2.2 million 
jobs, among the highest-skilled, best-paying jobs in our economy.''
  My colleague, the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spratt), goes on 
to point out that ``Republican claimed that both the 2001 and the 2002 
tax cuts would create jobs but they were wrong. Instead, 2.7 million 
private sector jobs have vanished since this administration took office 
a little over 2 years ago.''
  The fact is tax cuts have yielded 400 to $500 billion deficits. They 
did not revive a sluggish economy, and what you are hearing now is, 
well, this is because of the war. Not true. Forty-three percent of our 
current deficits are directly attributable to these tax cuts. A small 
percentage is attributable to the war. We have only authorized $80 
billion and the rest comes from the sluggish economy which the 2001 tax 
cuts failed to revive.
  What happened in 2001 was that we had a $5.6 trillion surplus, and my 
Republican colleagues came down here and said, We have got to give this 
money back to the American taxpayer so we can invigorate our economy. 
That did not happen. What we have instead is a projection over the next 
10 years of a $2 trillion deficit and we are going to borrow over $500 
billion this year.
  The fact of the matter is the tax cut policy of the Republicans has 
not worked. We have seen this plan before.
  Now we turn to what I call the Bush/Thomas model. I think it is a 
model of tax unfairness and ineffective economic policy. An analysis of 
the Thomas proposal by the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center concluded 
that his plan would be even more tilted to the affluent than Bush's 
original plan. According to the Brookings analysis, the average tax cut 
offered by the Thomas proposal for households earning more than a 
million dollars would be almost $43,000 in tax cuts in 2003, compared 
with the administration's original proposal to give the very wealthy 
only 27,000. Then on top of that the top 5 percent of households, the 
top 5 percent of American households would receive 64 percent of the 
Bush dividend proposal, but under the Thomas proposal that they will 
roll out this week that same 5 percent would get 75 percent of the tax 
benefits.
  There is something fundamentally unfair about that.
  Now, in truth the middle class will only get about $100 to $200 in 
so-called tax relief; but the administration says, oh, no, a family 
earning about $40,000 would get about $1,000. That is called 
flimflamming the numbers. What they do is they take the average, 
reflecting the fact that the millionaire will get $43,000 annually. 
That is how they get that false average.
  In addition, we find that the Thomas plan does not create jobs. There 
is broad census among economists that reducing dividend taxes does not 
create jobs. In fact, economy.com has rated this as one of the least 
effective options in terms of stimulating growth. Bill Dudley, chief 
U.S. economist for Goldman Sachs has pointed out, ``Rather than 
shoehorning the dividend plan in, they should be trying to shoehorn in 
the most amount of economic stimulus.''
  When the Democrats talk about our plan, we will talk about that, 
stimulus, putting money into the pockets of the middle class, helping 
our States' government so we can really stimulate this economy.
  Finally, the Republicans tell us, well, look at our child care tax 
credit. We do not just care about the wealthy. It is very interesting 
when you look closely because although the tax breaks for the very 
wealthy are permanent, the

[[Page H3665]]

child care tax credit that they would have you focus on is really only 
temporary, and by the year 2006 they will actually be losing money on 
the child care tax credit.
  So what we see in conclusion is a very flawed tax proposal tilted 
very much to the wealthy. They give us a solution to the American 
economy that says if you cut taxes on the wealthy, you will improve the 
economy by creating jobs. It did not work in 2001. It did not work in 
2002. It is as Yogi Berra said, deja vu all over again.
  I think we ought to reject this approach to tax policy and adopt a 
progressive Democratic approach that really works for middle class and 
working Americans.
  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson-Lee) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  (Ms. JACKSON-LEE of Texas addressed the House. Her remarks will 
appear hereafter in the Extensions of Remarks.)

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