[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 61 (Tuesday, April 17, 2007)]
[Senate]
[Pages S4590-S4591]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                               TAX RELIEF

  Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that a posting 
by someone under the name ``Blue Bunting'' made to the Care2 News 
Network be printed in the Record. This posting is a supplement to a 
speech I gave last Thursday, April 12, on attempts by some Democrats to 
elude responsibility for tax relief permanence.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                       [From Care2 News Network]

                    The Monster Republican Tax Hike


                                comments

       Blue Bunting: Tuesday April 3, 2007, 8:32 pm
       Last week I made a note to link to this post at Obsidian 
     Wings. I just spotted the note.
       Hilzoy notes the commentary in some quarters that:
       Following the example set by their Senate brethren last 
     Friday, House Democrats will adopt a budget resolution 
     containing the largest tax increase in U.S. history amid 
     massive national inattention.
       Bet you didn't know that, eh? The Dems are already pushing 
     through the largest tax increase in U.S. history! and nobody 
     is paying attention!
       Anyway, Hilzoy digs a bit further into the story. It really 
     is worth reading.
       Long story short . . . Republican Congresses chose not to 
     make their tax cuts (or, as PGL would note, their tax 
     deferments) permanent. They didn't have to put in a sunset 
     clause--they chose to, in an attempt to make long term 
     projections look better. Even with that obfuscation, the 
     situation no longer looks quite so rosy. But . . . if the new 
     Democratic Congress doesn't do what the Republican Congresses 
     that preceded it failed to do, namely make the tax cut 
     permanent, well, that's the equivalent of the Democrats 
     pushing the largest tax increase in history.
       Maybe it's just me . . . but since this whole thing was 
     planned and executed by a Republican Congress under a 
     Republican President, shouldn't we be referring to this as 
     the Republican's tax increase? And my bet is that there are a 
     lot of Republicans in Congress now, and that will be seeking 
     re-election some time soon, that voted for this massive tax 
     increase.
       Blue Bunting: Tuesday April 3, 2007, 9:07 pm
       Fact Check
       Robert Novak wrote this in today's Washington Post:
       ``Following the example set by their Senate brethren last 
     Friday, House Democrats will adopt a budget resolution 
     containing the largest tax increase in U.S. history amid 
     massive national inattention.
       Nobody's tax payment will increase immediately, but the 
     budget resolutions set a pattern for years ahead. The House 
     version

[[Page S4591]]

     would increase non-defense, non-emergency spending by $22.5 
     billion for next fiscal year, with such spending to rise 2.4 
     percent in each of the next three years. To pay for these 
     increases, the resolution would raise taxes by close to $400 
     billion over five years--about $100 more than what was passed 
     in the Senate.''
       Heavens, I said to myself, what can Robert Novak possibly 
     be talking about? The Democrats budget (pdf, h/t The Gavel) 
     does not actually contain any tax increases:
       And yet this claim that the Democrats' budget contains a 
     tax increase is being cited all over the place. So what's up?
       Novak gives us a clue:
       ``It had been assumed that the new Democratic majority 
     would end President Bush's relief in capital gains dividend 
     and estate taxation. The simultaneous rollback of Bush-
     sponsored income tax cuts was a surprise.''
       Ah, Rolling back the Bush tax cuts. But wouldn't that still 
     require some actual changes in revenues from the baseline 
     projections? A GOP Budget Caucus press release gives us 
     further details:
       Note that word `automatic'. It's quite worrying. How did 
     the Democrats manage to create an automatic tax increase? 
     Don't tax increases normally have to be enacted? I hope so. 
     It would be awful if tax increases could just happen 
     automatically. Come to think of it, it would be even worse if 
     it turns out that this isn't confined to the tax code, and 
     all sorts of laws could be passed automatically. I mean, who 
     knows what the U.S. Code might decide to do to itself, 
     without the intervention of any human agent? We could wake up 
     one morning to find that ping pong had been automatically 
     criminalized, or that a requirement that all Americans wear 
     silly clown costumes had automatically come into force, or 
     that all our national parks had automatically sold themselves 
     to WalMart. The possibilities are horrifying.
       Imagine my relief when I realized what was actually going 
     on. The Bush tax cuts are set to expire automatically. They 
     were written that way. What the Democrats are proposing to do 
     is simply not to change this.
       Moreover, guess who wrote these sunset provisions into the 
     tax increases? The Republicans, that's who. They were trying 
     to make the tax increases seem less fiscally ruinous than 
     they were, so they made them last only so long before they 
     expired. (This is why I expect 2010 to produce a spike in 
     mortality among the very rich; the heirs of people who die 
     during 2010 pay no estate tax; the heirs of people who die in 
     2011 pay 50% on all the money they inherit above the level at 
     which the estate tax kicks in. As Paul Krugman said, ``That 
     creates some interesting incentives. Maybe they should have 
     called it the Throw Momma From the Train Act of 2001.'')
       So here's what Novak's ``largest tax increase in U.S. 
     history'' actually comes to the Republicans passed a series 
     of tax cuts that they set up to expire. They intended to make 
     them permanent, but never got around to it. The Democrats are 
     proposing to leave their tax cuts alone. But this counts as a 
     tax increase, apparently on the grounds that whatever 
     Republicans sorta kinda thought they were going to do, but 
     never actually got around to doing, counts as already done, 
     and anyone who proposes to leave things alone counts as 
     undoing the things they were intending to do.
       That's a fun way to think. Maybe we should also count the 
     Democrats as having dramatically increased the budget 
     deficit, on the grounds that the Republicans kinda sorta said 
     they were going to make it go away, so even though they 
     didn't, we should act as though they did and compare whatever 
     deficits the Democrats incur to the Republicans' imaginary 
     balanced budget. Maybe, if things in Iraq continue to go 
     badly, we should compare that not to the situation when the 
     Democrats took over, but to the situation that would have 
     obtained if the Republicans had in fact produced a beacon of 
     democracy that transformed the Middle East, and say: hey, you 
     awful Democrats, we were being greeted with flowers and 
     candy, and hailed as liberators, and now look what's happened 
     to Baghdad!!!!
       Or maybe we should try living in the real world. The 
     Democrats are proposing to leave tax laws written and enacted 
     by Republicans alone. That does not count as increasing 
     taxes.
       Michaelena Whittaker: Thursday April 5, 2007, 11:21 am
       Ditto, Blue . . . it' all a political ploy, as usual 
     (``High Treason'' has been THE neocon agenda since the 80's.)
       Indigo Star Nation: Saturday April 7, 2007, 11:14 pm
       Impeachment is the only way to end these atrocities and 
     reclaim America's conscience and honor.
       http://www.care2.com/c2c/groups/
disc.html?gpp=11736&pst=633140
       Read this thread and take action to impeach.
       Also follow my news shares on withholding your taxes as a 
     protest.

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