[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 80 (Tuesday, June 3, 2003)]
[House]
[Page H4856]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                             UNFAIR TAX CUT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from California (Mr. George Miller) is recognized for 5 
minutes.
  Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, the billion dollar tax 
cut that President Bush signed into law last week was supposed to give 
everyone who pays taxes a tax cut. In fact, President Bush said, ``My 
jobs and growth plan would reduce taxes for everyone who pays income 
taxes.'' The President declared that several weeks ago.
  Well, now as it turns out, that is not exactly the truth; and the 
devil is in the details. Because what the President did not tell the 
American public and what he did not tell America's families waiting for 
their tax cut was that a back-room deal he struck with the leadership 
in the House and the Senate, a bill that was sent for his signature, 
excluded 2.5 million taxpayers and 12 million children from the 
benefits of this bill. These are mostly single-parent households, with 
a child 16 years or older, that earn between $10,000 and $26,000 a 
year.
  It was not a mistake. It was not an oversight. The Republican tax 
writers who crafted the final compromise all by themselves, with no 
Democrats in the room, under the supervision of Vice President Cheney, 
made a conscious decision to roll back the benefits of the child tax 
credit for 12 million children to save $3.5 billion. And they did not 
take that savings and put it into the Treasury against the massive 
deficit they created. They took that $3.5 billion, and they gave it to 
corporations who run overseas to avoid taxes; they refused to close the 
Enron loopholes that destroyed corporations and many people's 
retirement. They took that money from those 12 million children, and 
they gave it away so that they would not have to close corporate tax 
loopholes.
  Now, what does this mean, and why are we here late into the evening 
to discuss this matter? Why have so many Democrats lined up to speak on 
this matter? Because this is an issue of basic fundamental values about 
our families in this country, about equity, and about fairness. And the 
Republican tax bill violated all of those values. They made a conscious 
choice to take families, a husband and a wife earning $15,000 to 
$20,000, a little bit more, raising a couple of kids, a single parent 
raising a couple of kids, who are struggling to get by in a tough 
economy, and they decided that they were simply going to exclude them 
from the benefits of this tax bill. They were not going to give them 
the child credit.
  Now, Congress had made a decision over the past many years, from 
Ronald Reagan on, that we should have a child credit; that we should 
try to help offset the cost of raising children for middle-income 
families and lower-income families and that has been the policy in this 
country on a bipartisan basis. But this extreme Republican leadership 
in the House, along with Vice President Cheney and now the Republican 
leadership in the Senate, decided that these children had less value 
than other children in the Nation.
  What kind of person makes that decision about these children that 
they do not even know, about these parents struggling to raise their 
children and to pay their health care, to educate them, to provide them 
the necessities and maybe a little extra on salaries that do not exceed 
$26,000 a year? What kind of mind, what kind of person was in that room 
that night when they made a decision to deny these children, to deny 
these parents this increase of $400 in a tax cut to come this summer, 
that these children and these families would not get to participate in? 
It is a corruption and a corrosion of any sense of the public interest. 
It is a corruption of the process of this Congress that they would do 
this in the middle of the night in a secret deal and tell no one.
  It was only after the President signed the bill did they have to 
admit that this was what was done. First they tried to say it was not 
true. First they tried to say that this did not affect these families. 
They were playing a little fast and loose with the truth down at the 
White House that day through the President's spokespersons. Well, the 
truth came out. Twelve million children denied the benefits of the 
child tax credit.
  This is extremism at its far point. This is a denial of the value of 
America's families at the extreme. This act must be overturned. It must 
be overturned soon so that these families too can get that $400 check 
that they are entitled to under the laws of this land and a decent 
system of fairness and equity.

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