[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 84 (Tuesday, June 10, 2003)]
[House]
[Pages H5096-H5097]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      TAX CUT TO WORKING FAMILIES

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to the order of the House of 
January 7, 2003, the gentlewoman from Illinois (Ms. Schakowsky) is 
recognized during morning hour debates for 5 minutes.
  Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. Mr. Speaker, I want to congratulate the gentlewoman 
from California (Ms. Loretta Sanchez) for her eloquent statement on 
behalf of the people who are left out of the Republican tax cut bill 
and the people who like the Narvaez family in my district are working 
hard every single day. This is Maria Narvaez and her daughters Alma and 
Elia. She has another daughter too. She is standing in front of a 
community organization called Family Matters in my district and all of 
us would hope that to every Member of Congress that families really do 
matter.
  To Ms. Narvaez, they really do. She works also in a day care center 
taking care of other people's children, and for all of her full-time 
work she earns $20,000. When the tax cut bill passed the Senate 
originally, it had a refundable tax credit. She would have gotten up to 
another $400, which may not mean much to some people, but could mean a 
lot to Maria and her daughters and her son, who are pictured there. She 
would have taken that money and

[[Page H5097]]

gone right out and maybe paid a few bills or bought some extra food for 
the family or some clothes. Money would have gone directly into the 
economy and would have helped to create more jobs and stimulate growth.
  But instead, what the House Republicans said is that she and her 
family are just simply not wealthy enough to have a tax cut because in 
the dead of night what happened to that Senate provision that would 
have given her a tax cut that would have given her a rebate, Vice 
President Cheney went in and said, wait a minute, and he helped 
negotiate this, the bill that was passed goes too high. It spends too 
much money. So somebody is going to have to be cut out. And in the dark 
of night, in a secret negotiating deal, it was families like the 
Narvaez family who were cut out.
  It is not just her. I talked to a mother of a Marine yesterday. I had 
breakfast with her. And she was telling me, he is in Iraq right now but 
she was telling me that when she went to visit him at his base there 
was a church nearby that had a big box in front of it and she said what 
is that box? And that is for donations of clothing for the military 
families. Understand that I am not talking about the generals and I am 
not talking about the people that are sitting at the Pentagon. I am 
talking about the young men and women, the privates, the privates first 
class who are over in Iraq who are risking their lives every day, some 
of them losing their lives, and we do not know how many have been 
injured in that war, those people also have been cut out of this bill, 
and this is what the majority leader said. The gentleman from Texas 
(Mr. DeLay), the majority leader, said there are a lot of other things 
that are more important; and what that must mean is that it is more 
important to give an average of $90,000 tax cut to millionaires, and it 
is more important to pass a tax dividend cut, the taxes we pay on 
dividends, to cut that, than to ensure families who are making less 
than $26,000 to have a few extra dollars to spend on their families.
  And the reality is that if Congress does not act by the end of June, 
6.5 million low-income families will not receive their refund checks at 
the same time as the middle-class families do. So we are under a time 
frame here. It is not something that we can just chat about. Who does 
benefit then from the tax cut bill? Let us talk about who actually gets 
a benefit. Vice President Cheney who negotiated that deal that cut this 
family out will reap about $116,000 a year from the dividend and 
capital gains provisions in the tax bill. Maria will have to work about 
10 years in order to have an income that equals the 1-year tax cut that 
the Vice President will get, and that is not the only thing. John Snow, 
the Secretary of the Treasury, will get in 1 year a tax cut about 
$332,000.
  She will have to work 16 years to get that. Let us talk about 
fairness here. Let us talk about what is good for the economy and good 
for families. Let us do what the Senate did when they fixed it. Let us 
give a tax cut to working families.

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