[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 68 (Thursday, May 8, 2003)]
[House]
[Pages H3833-H3834]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                 TAX CUT HURTS MIDDLE-INCOME AMERICANS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Maine (Mr. Allen) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. ALLEN. Mr. Speaker, I rise tonight to discuss the proposed 
Republican tax cut that will be on the floor tomorrow, and I speak 
tonight because I know that the majority will not give us the kind of 
time to debate the issue tonight that the subject deserves.
  I want to begin by just saying for anyone in the country trying to 
follow this debate, it is bound to be confusing and the question would 
have to arise, What is going on? I hate to say it, but I am afraid 
there is a good deal of deception in the arguments that are being made 
to promote this particular tax cut. For example, when the President 
spoke on April 15, he said that American workers and American 
businesses need every bit of their tax relief now. He said, a 
significant part of the benefit from his tax cut package would come 
within the first 2 years of the plan. He wanted to give Americans, he 
said, immediate tax relief.

                              {time}  1830

  When we look at the facts, only 6 percent of the tax cuts in the 
President's package would occur in the current fiscal year which ends 
September 30. Only 21 percent of the tax cuts would occur by the end of 
fiscal year 2004.
  The White House has also released a fact sheet which says that under 
the President's proposal to speed up tax relief 92 million American 
taxpayers would receive, key words, on average a tax cut of $1,083 in 
2003. Once again, the averages do not speak the truth. Eighty percent 
of the American taxpayers would get less than the average of $1,000. 
Forty-nine percent of the American taxpayers would receive a tax cut of 
less than $100.
  So what is really going on here? It is very clear. If we look at what 
the Republican majority does and not what

[[Page H3834]]

they say, the goal is to reduce taxes on the wealthiest people in this 
country. The goal is to push the burden of funding government from the 
Federal level onto the States, and this is driven by an astonishing and 
remarkable continuing hostility to everything that the Federal 
Government does.
  Let us look at our brothers in the States. Almost every State in this 
country is struggling with trying to fulfill their responsibilities. 
They are under pressures to raise property taxes and sales taxes 
because of reductions in Federal funds. We are not talking about a tax 
cut at the Federal level. We are talking about a tax shift. They are 
reducing funding for education, reducing funding for Medicaid, laying 
off State employees.
  There is no way, furthermore, that we can call this tax cut fair by 
any stretch of the imagination. To take one more figure, one group of 
Americans will get tax cuts that total $139 billion. That group of 
American taxpayers are the 183 households that earn more than $1 
million per year. Another group of Americans will get a total package 
of $139 billion, but that group is 124 million American households, the 
bottom 89 percent of our taxpayers, but that is not the worst.
  People will come to this floor and they will say we are going to let 
people keep more of their money. It is not their money. Every single 
dollar that is going to be given back in tax cuts under the Republican 
proposal, every single dollar will be borrowed from the American 
people, and we, the American people, will wind up if this tax cut 
passes tomorrow with an additional Federal debt of somewhere between 
$550 billion on the low side to well over $1 trillion on the upside. 
This is our children's money that is being taken from them to give to 
the wealthiest people in the country, and it is an outrage.
  This will also, for obvious reasons, drive up the debt. We have 
people coming to this floor and saying, well, these tax cuts will 
stimulate economic growth and they will try to leave us with the 
impression that there will be even more Federal revenues coming in. It 
is not true. By every economic model that the Congressional Budget 
Office has run, there is a dramatic decline in Federal revenues. We are 
looking, when we add up the 2001 tax legislation, other Bush 
administration tax proposals, when we package it all together, we are 
looking at a reduction in Federal revenues over 10 years of $4.6 
trillion.
  This plan is a disaster for our States, for working Americans. It is 
a violation of the fundamental premise that we will work together in 
this country to build a better and stronger America. This plan, this 
Republican tax cut plan, is a disaster for the country.

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