[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 68 (Thursday, May 8, 2003)]
[House]
[Page H3829]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                  TAX CUTS FOR THE WEALTHY NOT HEALTHY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Oregon (Mr. DeFazio) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, 2 years ago, as the recession began and the 
government was projecting a $5.6 trillion surplus, the President 
muscled through a big $1.2 trillion tax cut based on those rosy 
projections that we would have surpluses as far as the eye could see. 
He said we could have it all. We could fully fund the Social Security 
Trust Fund and the lockbox and the Medicare Trust Fund and the lockbox, 
we could increase spending for education, the military, and we could 
cut taxes. A number of us at the time said, well, we really should not 
spend the money before we have it in the bank, and we said, let us do 
it year by year. We lost and we went forward.
  Now, they also said at the time, and this is a quote from the 
gentleman from California (Mr. Thomas), the chairman of the House 
Committee on Ways and Means, that their $1.2 trillion tax proposal was 
the solution for the then beginnings of the malaise of the United 
States economy.

                              {time}  1815

  The quote, ``By moving quickly our hope is to have both monetary and 
fiscal policy pull this economy out of its nose dive.''
  Since the gentleman from California (Mr. Thomas) made that statement 
on the day the bill was passed, March 8, 2001, the United States of 
America has lost a million jobs and the economy is still in decline.
  Now the entire surplus has vanished. We are now confronted with 
deficits as far as the eye can see. And what do they propose? They 
propose now to borrow money to give tax cuts. That is right. We are 
going to borrow money to give tax cuts. Never before in the history of 
our Nation will we have borrowed so much, a trillion dollars, to give 
to so few. A few thousand individuals will benefit principally from 
this massive tax giveaway.
  Every penny of the Social Security surplus only paid by wage-earning 
Americans will be borrowed and in great part transferred to those who 
earn over a million dollars a year, $105,000 each average tax cut for 
people who earn over a million dollars a year. It is an awful lot of 
Social Security taxes. That is an awful lot of hours worked by 
Americans and their families to finance those tax cuts for the 
wealthiest of the wealthy. The top 5 percent, $200,000 and up, will get 
64 percent of the benefits. And as I said, families $1 million and up 
will average $105,600. And it principally goes to people who do not 
work for wages.
  Somehow this administration honors those who either inherited or 
otherwise, perhaps they were part of the Enron scam or something else 
have accumulated a bunch of money, or otherwise honorably earned a 
bunch of money, but they can invest for a living. They do not work for 
wages. They do not have to go in 40 hours a week, 60 hours a week. They 
do not have to hold two jobs. They do not have to work for wages. They 
should pay a tax rate lower, according to this administration, than 
working American families.
  Now, in the short term they say this trickle down from these wealthy 
people will put those working wage-earning folks back to work, and 
understand their theory since wage earners will pay higher taxers than 
investors, that will ultimately undo the deficits. We will get the 
money from the wage earners because the investors will not be paying 
the taxes anymore. But even to get there, they had to put in a Brooklyn 
Bridge provision which is that many of the provisions of this 
legislation will expire in a few years. Otherwise, the cost tag would 
go over a trillion dollars; and since we are borrowing all this money 
to give back, that would be a problem with a lot of folks. So the 
Brooklyn Bridge provision says that most of these tax cuts, except the 
ones that go to the wealthy, will expire in 2005. So the child care 
credit increase up to a thousand dollars, well, that drops back down to 
$700 in 2005. The increasing of the 10 percent bracket for the lowest 
income earners, those around $12,000-$14,000 a year, well, that expires 
in 2005. Married couples, helping to do away with the marriage penalty, 
that expires in 2005. The AMT, a lot of people do not know what that 
is, but a lot of middle-income families and upper-middle-income 
families will be falling into this trap, it needs to be fixed, that 
expires in 2005.
  But guess what? The capital gains and dividend provisions, those that 
give the $105,000 a year to the families that earn over a million 
dollars, that never expires under the proposal the House will vote on 
tomorrow. And the top bracket rate reductions, those will not ever 
expire either. Wage-earning suckers will pay the bill while people who 
can afford to invest for a living will reap the benefits.
  But this is trickle-down economics revisited; and as we know, it 
worked really well in the 1980s. In fact, Dick Cheney was one of the 
principal architects back then to the deficit-producing, job-killing, 
trickle-down economics of the 1980s; and now we will revisit it in the 
21st century. Shame on this House of Representatives for bringing up 
this bill in this manner with this constrained debate with no 
alternative that would produce jobs and wealth in this country allowed 
to be offered.

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