[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 85 (Wednesday, June 11, 2003)]
[House]
[Page H5247]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            CHILD TAX CREDIT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Feeney). Under a previous order of the 
House, the gentlewoman from Illinois (Ms. Schakowsky) is recognized for 
5 minutes.
  Ms. SCHAKOWSKY. Mr. Speaker, it is stunning to me that whenever 
Democrats stand up on behalf of working families that our colleagues on 
the other side of the aisle start shaking their finger and saying, oh, 
the tax-and-spend Democrats. It is really amazing and takes an 
incredible amount of nerve for the Republicans to still want to wear 
that jacket of fiscal responsibility and to invoke it when we start 
talking about working families like this.
  Let us remember that the President was handed a $5 trillion surplus, 
surpluses as far as the eye could see. That is gone, blew that; and now 
we are at about a, according to the former Secretary, they are charging 
about a $4 trillion projected deficit, a debt, on top of that, and in a 
very short time we are almost $1 trillion in deficit. That means more 
money spent than we have brought in.
  They like to talk about the war: Oh, we had to spend all that money 
on homeland security. And indeed, we did, but let us remember that most 
of that deficit is caused because we are giving tax cuts to the 
wealthiest.
  Now the excuse is, well, this family, the Johnstons who make only 
$19,000, they do not deserve a tax cut, they say, because they do not 
pay tax. Hello, these are people who are paying a payroll tax. They pay 
sales tax, they pay excise taxes, like taxes on the gasoline they buy 
to get to their jobs, and they pay a payroll tax.
  Think for a minute. What are the only taxes that have not been 
reduced? We are not talking about dividend taxes, most of the people 
who clip coupons, the taxes that they pay. We are not talking about the 
taxes on high incomes. We are talking about the taxes that everyday 
working people pay. That is what we are trying to do with the child tax 
credit, for families like that, so that they can take it and buy 
formula or baby food for this baby, so that they can provide for her. 
And that is what we are trying to do.
  My colleagues notice this family is not smiling, but I want to show 
them the face of some people who are, in fact, smiling. Why are they 
smiling? A report by the Committee on Government Reform minority staff 
on the tax bill found that Treasury Secretary Snow's estimated dividend 
and capital tax savings is between $331,000 and $842,000. That is a 1-
year tax cut. No wonder he is smiling.
  Secretary Evans could see between $68,000 and $595,000 in tax 
savings.
  Vice President Cheney, who is not in the picture but is probably 
smiling at some undisclosed location, will reap $116,000 a year from 
the dividend capital gains provisions in the tax cut. In fact, the 
total tax savings for President Bush, Vice President Cheney, and the 
Cabinet could be up to $3.2 million. If I were a member of the Cabinet, 
I would probably be smiling, too.
  In my State, 674,000 children and 378,000 families are not smiling. 
Nearly 1 in 4 families in Illinois were left behind. Now, of course, 
they say if we take care of them we are just tax-and-spend. Tell me 
that we do not have enough money when we are giving tax breaks like 
that to not only the wealthiest in the private sector but these 
individuals who are serving us now as members of the Cabinet.
  Behind closed doors in final negotiations of the tax cut bill for 
millionaires, the White House and Republican leaders exterminated the 
child tax credit provision that would have helped families like the 
Johnstons and others making between $10,500 and $26,625. That is the 
people that we are talking about, people who in their lifetime it will 
take years and years and years to earn what these individuals will get 
in 1 year in a tax cut. By eliminating that provision, Republicans were 
guaranteeing that millionaires like Secretary Snow and Secretary Evans 
get their full tax cut.
  It did not take long for the American people to find out that their 
neighbors and their friends got the short end of the Republican tax cut 
stick, and that is why the United States Senate was shamed into passing 
a Democratic proposal to provide those low-income families with their 
well-deserved child tax credit that was removed in a secret deal by 
Vice President Cheney.
  They passed a restoration of the tax cut for those lower-income 
families, working families by, 94-2. But what are we hearing on this 
side? Majority Leader DeLay said, ``It ain't going to happen.'' Well, I 
want to say that I think it ought to happen, I think it will happen, 
and we need to make it happen.

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