[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 80 (Tuesday, June 3, 2003)]
[House]
[Page H4792]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      WORKING FAMILIES LEFT BEHIND

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to the order of the House of 
January 7, 2003, the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Pallone) is 
recognized during morning hour debates for 5 minutes.
  Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, I listened to the comments of my Republican 
colleague who just spoke, and I have to say it is very difficult for me 
to celebrate the Republican tax bill because the fact of the matter is, 
so many working people have been left out and are not receiving any 
benefits from the Republican tax bill. It was interesting to listen to 
the previous speaker because he talked about if money was going back to 
working families, they could go out and spend it and that would help 
the economy. If that is the case, why were so many families left out of 
the child tax credit or left out of other benefits that were basically 
going, under this Republican tax bill, to the high-income people?
  The spin on the other side of the aisle is amazing, but the editorial 
comments during the Memorial Day recess have basically shown this is 
essentially a fraud. The Republican tax bill does not do what it 
purports to do, and it leaves out so many working people. For those who 
might doubt what I say, I want to mention some of the editorial 
comments in the New York Times and Washington Post in the last couple 
of days.
  In Monday's New York Times there was an opinion by Bob Herbert called 
``The Reverse Robin Hood,'' and I will go through certain sections that 
Mr. Herbert said. He said, ``If you wanted a quintessential example of 
what the Bush administration and its legislative cronies are about, it 
was right there on the front page of the Times last Thursday: `Tax Law 
Omits $400 Child Credit for Millions.'
  ``The fat cats will get their tax cuts. But in the new American 
plutocracy, there won't even be crumbs left over for the working folks 
at the bottom of the pyramid to scramble after.
  ``When House and Senate negotiators met last week to put the 
finishing touches to President Bush's tax bill, they coldly deleted a 
provision that would have allowed millions of low-income working 
families to benefit from the bill's increased child tax credit.
  ``It was a mean-spirited and wholly unnecessary act, a clear display 
of the current regime's outright hostility toward America's poor and 
working classes.
  ``The negotiators eliminated a provision in the Senate version of the 
tax bill that would have extended benefits from the child tax credit to 
families with incomes between $10,500 and $26,625. This is not a small 
group. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the 
families that would have benefited include about 12 million children, 
one of every six kids in the U.S. under the age of 17.''
  Mr. Speaker, how are you going to tell me that somehow this is 
putting money back in the pockets of working people?

                              {time}  1100

  These are working people. These people are not on welfare. They are 
out there working. They are getting nothing.
  Then it goes on to say in the Herbert article:
  And readers of yesterday's Times learned that another group of some 8 
million mostly low-income taxpayers, and I say taxpayers, primarily 
single people without children, will also be left behind, getting no 
benefit at all from the President's tax cuts.
  The comments just continue. This was yesterday's, Monday's, 
Washington Post. The editorial for the newspaper says, Children Left 
Behind. It says:
  ``Even for a debate over taxes, the public discussion taking place 
right now about child credits in the new tax law is particularly 
galling. Stiffing these children was not a last-minute oversight or the 
unfortunate result of an unreasonably tight $350 billion ceiling. 
Adjustments had to be made,'' a spokeswoman for the House Ways and 
Means Committee said, as if those on her side would have preferred 
otherwise. In fact, the administration did not include this provision 
in its original, $726 billion proposal. The House did not include it in 
its $550 billion version. The Senate Finance Committee did not include 
it.
  So when you try to get some suggestions from the Republicans that 
they are going to come down here and say, oh, this was an oversight or 
we are going to correct it, the President did not have this child tax 
credit for these people in his original proposal, the Senate 
Republicans did not have it, the House Republicans did not have it. How 
can they come down here and suggest that somehow it is an oversight? 
They say they are going to correct it. I hope they do correct it, but 
that is going to take some time, and I question whether in fact they 
really will correct it.
  The amazing thing to me is that we as Democrats have been saying all 
along how this Republican tax bill was not going to put money into the 
pockets of working families. Now all the editorial comments in every 
major newspaper say that that is true, the Daily News, you name it. 
Wherever it is around the country, they are all admitting the fact now 
that it is not true, that money is not going to those working people at 
the lower end of the spectrum. They are not getting the child tax 
credit. They are not getting anything. How can the Republicans now 
suggest that somehow that was an oversight or they are going to correct 
it in the future? The fundamental basis of their tax policy has been to 
give large amounts of money back to wealthy people, not to the average 
American. And the consequence of that is that the average American does 
not have money in his pocket, and there is no economic stimulus coming 
from this tax bill because it is not putting money back into the 
pockets of the average American in the way that they can go out and 
meaningfully spend it and actually have some stimulation for the 
economy. It is not happening.

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