[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 81 (Wednesday, June 4, 2003)]
[House]
[Pages H4960-H4961]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                           FAMILIES DO MATTER

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentlewoman from Illinois (Ms. Schakowsky) is recognized for 5 minutes.

[[Page H4961]]

  Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. Mr. Speaker, meet the Narvaez family. Maria Guadalupe 
Narvaez and her two daughters, Alma and Elia. Maria also has a son.
  Ms. Narvaez works very hard to take care of her children. As a day 
care teacher at the Howard Area Community Center in Chicago, which is 
my District, she takes good care of other people's children, too. She 
cares for other people's children as if they were her own. In this 
picture, she is standing in front of a sign at Family Matters, a 
community organization in my District that helps hardworking families 
with a variety of services.
  Sadly, the Narvaez family does not matter much to the Republican 
leadership. For those of us on this side of the aisle, though, her 
family does matter. So, too, do the families of the 12 million other 
children who were tossed aside by the Republican tax bill negotiators.
  About 1 million of those 12 million children who were left out live 
with parents who are serving on active military duty, our veterans, or 
who have spouses serving in the Armed Forces, the very people that this 
House today earlier paid verbal tribute to, even as they were dumped 
from the tax cut bill. By the way, the tax credit we are talking about, 
this refundable tax credit was started in the Nixon and Ford 
administrations.
  Those children would have benefited in 2003 from the child tax credit 
provisions that the Republicans stripped from their bill in order to 
provide even more giveaways to millionaires.
  Denying Ms. Narvaez and her three children and our heroic families 
from their child tax credit is unfair. It is mean-spirited and it is 
bad for the economy. After all, Mrs. Narvaez is not likely to invest 
her money in Bermuda tax havens. If the Republicans had given her the 
child tax credit she deserves, she would be buying shoes and clothes 
and other necessities for her children from local businesses. The money 
would have gone straight into circulation, helping the economy and 
creating jobs.
  The Narvaez family matters to me. If it were up to me, they would get 
the child tax credit that they need and deserve. Unfortunately, the 
decision was not up to me. Maria and Alma and Elia were not ignored by 
accident. They were deliberately and callously determined to be 
unimportant.
  They were included. They had been in the tax bill that was in the 
United States Senate until it became clear that the tax cuts had gone 
too high. So instead of saying, okay, well, what can we do to bring 
that dollar figure down, maybe we ought to slightly reduce the tax 
break that we give to millionaires; oh, no, this is the family that 
they decided to go after and millions of others like them.
  The Republican leader, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. DeLay), 
yesterday made it perfectly clear what his priorities and values were. 
He said very succinctly, ``There are a lot of other things that are 
more important.'' According to him, low income children do not deserve 
to be a priority because their families pay little or no income taxes, 
even if they work every day, even if they are good and productive 
members of their community, and even though they do pay taxes. They pay 
payroll taxes, sales taxes, property taxes.
  Families matter to Democrats, including families living in the 
majority leader's District, that he and his party and his President 
have so shamefully, or should I say shamelessly, chosen to leave 
behind.
  So what is more important to the majority Republican leader? How 
about providing tax breaks to special interests and to members of the 
Bush cabinet. Treasury Secretary John Snow was the CEO of CSX 
Corporation, a corporation that paid no Federal income taxes, zero, in 
2001, 2000 and 1998. John Snow would get at least $330,000 a year in 
dividend and capital gains tax cuts, more than Maria Guadalupe Narvaez 
would earn in 16 years at her current salary. That is how much his tax 
break is worth.
  Most Americans think it is wrong to allow big companies to avoid 
taxes by stashing profits in offshore tax havens, but to the Republican 
leader, the gentleman from Texas (Mr. DeLay), it is more important to 
protect corporate tax evaders than to provide a little relief, a little 
help to Alma, Elia and Maria.
  The Republicans took care of those who they cared about most and 
tossed aside those they do not care about at all. It is time for us to 
change the priorities of this country and give this deserving family 
the help that they need and want.

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