[Congressional Record Volume 170, Number 114 (Wednesday, July 10, 2024)]
[House]
[Pages H4534-H4535]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
TAXING BILLIONAIRES
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from
Rhode Island (Mr. Magaziner) for 5 minutes.
Mr. MAGAZINER. Mr. Speaker, I want you to take a look at this graph.
There are two lines. The dark blue line is the effective tax rate paid
by the 400 highest income earners in America, and the light blue line
is the effective tax rate paid by the bottom half of income earners in
our country.
In the 1960s, the people at the very top, the richest 400 Americans,
paid about twice the tax rate that the average middle-class family did,
but in 2018 during the Donald Trump Presidency and for the first time
in our history, the billionaires started paying a lower tax rate than
nurses, teachers, firefighters, and most other middle-class Americans
who put in an honest day's work and make our economy run.
It is unfair, it is absurd, and it is wrong.
How did we get here? For years, corrupt rightwing politicians gave
tax break after tax break to the billionaires and big corporations who
funded their campaigns. When the billionaires and big corporations
don't pay their fair share in taxes, you know who has to carry the
load? Working people carry the load--working people who can't afford to
pay thousands of dollars to go to Mar-a-Lago or Trump Hotel, working
people who don't get to move their money overseas or hire an Army of
accountants to find them tax loopholes or hire an Army of lobbyists to
create new loopholes for them, working people who have their healthcare
cut and their veterans benefits cut, working people who have to send
their kids to crumbling schools all because the politicians tell them
there isn't enough money left.
But there is always money when those billionaires come asking for
more tax cuts, isn't there?
When Donald Trump and the Republicans were in charge, they passed a
$2 trillion tax cut that went almost entirely to the wealthy, and then
they turned around and tried to repeal the Affordable Care Act and kick
16 million Americans off their health insurance. We know what their
priorities are, and we know what they will do if they return to power
in this election.
Already, Donald Trump and House Republicans are meeting with industry
lobbyists and billionaire donors to scheme how they can give away even
more tax breaks to the people at the very top and cut the programs that
working people depend on to get by.
Look at Project 2025, their policy plan for what they will do if they
take control. That plan calls for cutting Social Security by raising
the retirement age. It calls for repealing the Affordable Care Act,
eliminating Head Start programs that provide preschool for 1 million
children, eliminating the Department of Education, eliminating the
National Weather Service. Republicans
[[Page H4535]]
propose cuts, cuts, cuts to programs that help working people, and at
the same time they propose giving even more tax cuts to the people at
the top who don't need it.
It doesn't have to be this way.
We can go back to a system where the tax code is fair, and working
people aren't asked to pay an unfair burden. By asking the people at
the top to pay their fair share again like they used to, we can do
incredible things in this country.
We can ensure that Social Security benefits keep up with the cost of
living and that the program's life is extended indefinitely. We can cut
the cost of healthcare. We can ensure that every child receives a
world-class education. We can provide tax relief to working people who
actually need it.
The possibilities are right there in front of us, but we need to
reverse this dangerous trend. We need to stop the corruption. We need
to start working for working people, not the big donors and the
lobbyists, and we need to put people over politics.
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