[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 145 (1999), Part 13]
[Senate]
[Pages 17849-17852]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                              TAX RELIEF

  Mr. ENZI. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from South Carolina for 
his comments. As the accountant in the Senate, I appreciate when others 
join in the debate about the accounting issue, that if there is a 
surplus, why is the national debt going up? It is a very simple test. 
It is printed in the Record.
  It is our duty to be sure there is good accounting around here; that 
we aren't keeping two sets of books; that we aren't borrowing the best 
of each world. The articles mentioned, I point out, said everybody is 
involved in this. The President is even accepting the best of both 
worlds so that things can be done this year rather than future years 
when a more accurate surplus shows up.
  The best anybody is estimating now is $3 trillion in surplus. This is 
supposed to be a true surplus after Social Security. We are almost $6 
trillion in debt. Even if all the surplus went to debt, we would still 
be $3 trillion in debt. That is a lot of money.
  However, what we are talking about today isn't whether it is true 
surplus or not. We are not talking about spending down the national 
debt. We are talking about spending versus tax relief. Taking away from 
tax relief by the Democrats isn't with the intent of paying down the 
national debt. It is to put the money into new programs. We already 
have programs not adequately funded in this country. We have programs 
we have dedicated ourselves to in the past that are not adequately 
funded.
  We keep hearing ideas from the other side. We all have ideas about 
how to spend our money. We hear the ideas for new spending programs, 
which we will also inadequately fund. However, it is spending versus 
tax relief.
  If Members are confused, it is confusion in the rhetoric just heard: 
spending versus tax relief. We are saying there will have been a true 
overpayment of $3 trillion. That is an overpayment of your tax money.
  Do you want that spent on new programs, or do you want to get some of 
it back? That is the issue.
  If we are truly talking about paying down the national debt--Senator 
Allard and I have a bill that calls for paying off that national debt. 
It does not call for just paying down the national debt, but it calls 
for paying off the national debt over a 30-year period just as you pay 
a house mortgage. We are all familiar with that. It has been talked 
about on this floor this morning. It would pay it down like a house 
mortgage with 30 years of payments.
  How do we do that? We take $30 billion of that a year, plus the 
interest we save by paying down the debt, and we pay it off over a 30-
year period. It does not have all the pain everybody talks about, but 
it is something we owe to future generations. It was not the future 
generations who spent the money; it was us. We have an obligation to 
start the payments. We are buying a house for future generations, and, 
yes, they will have to make some of the payments on it because it 
extends over 30 years. But we can pay off the national debt, and we can 
do it and still have money to do some of the other things.
  There is a bill that will put that on 30-year payments. I hope the 
people will pay a little bit more attention to it while we are touting 
paying off the national debt. That should be an important factor for 
us. That is not what the debate is about. The debate is about spending 
versus paying back overpayment of taxes.
  I listened to these 45 minutes of speeches that preceded me, and it 
appears to me the Democrat definition of wealthy is anyone who pays 
taxes: If you pay taxes, you ought not get any back; we just have to 
worry about the poor.
  Everybody in this country gets something from the Government--
everybody. As we look at the other people, sometimes it appears as if 
they are getting more, but everybody gets something from the 
Government. We are in a situation in this country where almost half the 
people do not pay taxes. When that slips over half in a democracy, in a 
republic where we vote for our elected officials, what will be the sole 
source, the sole reason, for that vote? Whether we pay taxes or not. 
There will always be some paying taxes, and those who pay the taxes 
when there is an overpayment ought to receive some of their money back.
  The President has been saying he wants to save Social Security first, 
that he wants to extend the life of Medicare second, and let me--it is 
a little confusing what comes third; I think it is spending and then 
tax relief.
  I have listened to two State of the Union speeches where the message 
was: Save Social Security first. I am still waiting for the plan, a 
true plan. I have seen the plan where money is taken from Social 
Security and put into the trust fund and then a check is written for 
spending, and all the trust fund winds up with is IOUs. That is the way 
it has been, it is the way it is, and it is the way the President wants 
it to be.
  You can take that money and, instead of putting it back into regular 
spending, you can put it back into Social Security. This is the 
greatest pyramid scheme that has ever happened. You can show where you 
get that trust fund up a couple trillions of dollars, and it is just by 
spending the money in

[[Page 17850]]

the trust fund and putting it back in again. It is the same money being 
counted time after time. We cannot put up with that. That is not true 
accounting. That is what we have been talking about this morning. That 
does not save Social Security.
  We do have a crisis coming up in Social Security. There are at least 
five plans on Social Security. The best of each of those plans can be 
combined into one, and we can save Social Security first.
  Medicare is extremely important. There are a lot of people relying on 
it. Do my colleagues know what the biggest debate in Medicare is these 
days? How we can spend more money, how we can include more people, 
include more benefits. And we are still leaving those people who are 
really counting on Medicare dangling. We have a trust fund that we are 
spending. It is revolving, too. We have to quit doing the IOUs.
  There is something else that is a little misleading on this tax 
policy. This is not a Republican plan; this is a bipartisan plan which 
passed out of the Finance Committee. If my colleagues will check the 
Washington Post that everybody seems so intent on quoting this morning, 
they will find a guest editorial by Bob Kerrey who explains why the tax 
relief package is important and why he voted for the tax relief 
package. It is a bit more complicated than anything I am interested in, 
but every Senator does not get his own way on a tax package, and I am 
willing to recognize that.
  Again, we need to save Social Security, we need to strengthen 
Medicare, we need to take care of debt reduction, and I have already 
suggested a way that might be done. There is a bill that will do that 
relatively painlessly over a 30-year period. I do hope that, instead of 
going into a whole bunch of new spending programs, some of which are 
very new and not well thought out, we will look at tax relief for every 
American taxpayer as the money is available, and that is giving a tax 
break to those who are paying the tax.
  I also want to talk about small business and individual death relief. 
It is a big issue in my part of the country. Most of Wyoming is small 
businesses. Those small businesses are sometimes retailers, sometimes 
manufacturing, quite often they are ranches and farms.
  Let me tell you what happens when the head of household dies. The IRS 
estimates the value of his property--estimates it. I have not heard 
anybody saying that those estimates are low. They estimate the value of 
the property, and that family sells off part of the land or all of it 
to pay that tax debt. If one sells off a part of a ranch or a farm, 
quite often what they are left with is not economically viable. In 
fact, in the current economic situation there is a lot of question 
about the economic viability of the future of our family farms and 
ranches. There is tremendous concern for that.
  We also have this death tax we impose by IRS estimates at the time of 
death. If I were involved in the Finance Committee final decisions on 
these things, the way I would work that is not to have an estimate at 
the time of death. Instead, I would have the real value at the time 
there is any sale. If that stays in the family, it keeps the same basis 
it always had and they do not have to estimate it. When the property is 
sold, when the business is sold, you are not eliminating an 
economically viable business at that point in time. At that point in 
time, you are just collecting the revenues for a true value on a sale. 
There are other ways that can be enhanced, and I hope in an incremental 
way they will be.
  I see the Senator from Texas is here. I have joined her in working on 
marriage tax penalty relief, a grossly unfair situation in the United 
States. We are not putting our tax policy where our mouth is. We are 
saying we want stronger families in this country, and then we are 
penalizing marriage. We cannot have that.
  There are a number of changes that need to be made in our tax policy. 
When I came here, I was very naive. I anticipated that Senators sat 
down in little groups and talked about policy like this and then 
crossed outlines and added words and came up with bills on which people 
agreed. I am a little disappointed in how much cross-communication 
there is here.
  I congratulate the Finance Committee for the work they did on this 
tax package. It is a bipartisan tax package. I hope people will work to 
improve it, that they will work not only on the Senate side but they 
will work on the other side of this building. Often it looks to me as 
if we have more conflicts between the House and Senate than we have 
between Democrats and Republicans.
  When one is listening to the rhetoric on whether we are going to 
spend, which is the reason for not doing tax relief, or do tax relief, 
pay attention to the debate, and, yes, my colleagues will hear some 
dissension among the Republicans, probably because we understand taxes 
and want to come up with the best possible plan, the best possible way 
to deal with any overpayment that comes up.
  I thank the Chair and yield the floor.
  Mrs. HUTCHISON addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Texas.
  Mrs. HUTCHISON. Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Wyoming for 
talking about the tax cuts and why we need them because we heard a lot 
of debate this morning about that very issue.
  I think we are getting down to the core issue between how the 
Democrats on their side of the aisle would spend taxpayer money and how 
the Republicans would spend taxpayer money.
  I think you can tell right off the bat what people are going to think 
about tax cuts by how they describe them. When they talk in terms of: 
How much is it going to cost us to give tax cuts to the American 
people, right away you know they believe the money you earn belongs to 
them.
  We believe the money you earn belongs to you. We do not think we have 
a choice to take that money and go spend it on some program that you 
may or may not like. But if you had the choice of whether to spend $500 
to take your children on a vacation or to make a car payment or to save 
for a downpayment on a home, or a program that may or may not affect 
you, most people would rather make the decisions themselves.
  So let's talk about some of the issues that have been raised this 
morning.
  First of all, if I heard ``reckless'' one time, I heard it 100 times 
this past weekend. Let's talk about ``reckless.'' We have $3 trillion 
estimated as our surplus. Let's talk about how we are going to spend 
that, and let's see if it seems reckless.
  We are going to set aside 75 cents of every dollar of the surplus for 
paying down debt, for strengthening Social Security, for spending on 
Medicare, education, and other sources. That will be 75 cents on the 
dollar to pay down debt, strengthening Social Security, strengthening 
Medicare, and other spending items.
  And 25 cents of every dollar is going to be given back to the people 
who earned it. So 75 percent to pay down debt; 25 percent given back to 
the people who earned it.
  We are not a corporation. We do not have a choice of what to do with 
profits. We take just as much money as we are going to need to fund 
legitimate Government programs and services. That is what governments 
do. Anything left over goes right back to the people who earned it.
  Right now, the people of our country are paying more in peacetime 
taxes than ever in our history. They deserve to have some of that money 
back. Many families have two income earners just to cover the taxes so 
they can keep their quality of life for themselves and their children. 
We want them to have the quality of life they choose, not by taking 
taxes from them but by letting them decide how they spend the money 
they earn.
  I am reading a headline in the Washington Post that says: ``Clintons 
Plan Appeal to Women on Tax Cut.'' They make the argument that we are 
not going to do anything for Medicare, and if we do not strengthen 
Medicare it is going to hurt women the most because they live longer.
  I agree with the premise that women live longer, and cutting Medicare 
so

[[Page 17851]]

that it is not there for them would hurt women the most, but that is 
not what the Republican plan does. The Republican plan does set aside 
the money for Medicare.
  I would ask the President, when he is talking about strengthening 
Medicare, why he chose to disregard his own Medicare trustees and the 
bipartisan plan they supported that would have strengthened Medicare on 
a bipartisan basis and would have given prescription drug help to those 
who need it that was agreed to by both sides of the aisle in Congress; 
and yet the President walked away from that Medicare reform. Today he 
is saying our plan does not help Medicare, when he had a chance to help 
Medicare and he walked away from it--a bipartisan effort of Congress to 
save Medicare.
  I do not think the President can have it both ways.
  Let me tell you what our tax plan does for the women of our country.
  No. 1, we eliminate the marriage penalty tax. If a policeman marries 
a schoolteacher, they owe $1,000 more in taxes to the Federal 
Government because they got married. The highest priority the tax cut 
plan has is to eliminate that penalty. I would say that is very good 
for the women of our country because they are often the ones who are 
discriminated against with the marriage penalty tax. We are going to 
correct that with our tax cut plan. I think that is good for the women 
of our country.
  No. 2, I have introduced a bill for the last 3 years that would allow 
women who leave the workplace and have children and decide to raise 
their children, either 6 years before they start school or even 18 
years if they decide to, when they come back into the workforce they 
would be able to buy back into their pension plans as if they had not 
left.
  You see, women are discriminated against in our country, in the 
pension system especially, because they are the ones who live the 
longest and they have the lowest pensions. They have the lowest 
pensions because women are the ones who have children and who stay home 
to raise them for at least part of the early years, and they never get 
to catch up under the present system.
  I commend Senator Roth for making that a priority in the Senate tax 
cut bill, that we would stop discrimination in the pension plans of 
women in the workforce by allowing them to catch up.
  So I think we have done a lot for women. We are setting aside the 
money to strengthen Medicare; $500 billion over 10 years for added 
spending on Medicare, education, defense. We need to have that 
cushion--$500 billion.
  In addition to that, we set aside all of the Social Security 
surplus--every single penny. We fence it off for Social Security 
because that is the No. 1 concern, and it is the No. 1 stabilizing 
force for the elderly in our country. That is the first priority in our 
whole plan. Also, $2 trillion goes directly to Social Security reform 
and stabilization. That will be fenced off.
  The other $1 trillion we want to divide among spending increases and 
tax cuts. We believe it is a balanced plan. We believe the American 
people deserve to have back in their pocketbooks the money they earn in 
order to make the decisions for their families. Also, we have been 
especially attentive to trying to bring equality for women back into 
the system.
  It is the Republican Congress that gave women the right to contribute 
equally to IRAs. Before we had our tax cut plan 2 years ago, women who 
didn't work outside the home could only set aside $250 a year for their 
retirement security; whereas, if you worked outside the home, you could 
set aside $2,000 a year. That has gone away. We have equalized women 
who work outside the home and women who work inside the home with our 
IRA spousal opportunities.
  Now we have to go back and help them on pensions, too. That is where 
the lion's share of the stability is for our retired people. It is in 
their retirement systems. That is where women have been hit the hardest 
because it is women, by and large, who have the children and who will 
stay home and raise them. I applaud the men who do this, and I 
appreciate them, but by and large, it is the women who do it. When they 
come back into the workforce, they are penalized by not being able to 
have the opportunity to buy back into their pension system so they will 
have stability when they retire.
  Our bill does target women. It is a balanced bill. It saves Social 
Security. It contributes to more Medicare. It allows for added 
spending, and it gives tax cuts to the working people who earn this 
money. We don't own this money. The people who earn it own it. That is 
the difference I ask the people of our country to look at as we go 
through this debate.
  Listen to how people talk about tax cuts. If they talk about what it 
costs the Federal Government, then they don't think your money belongs 
to you. If they talk about it in terms of how do we best give it back 
to the people who own it, then you know we are looking out for the 
hard-working American who owns the money and wants to do his or her 
fair share to contribute to government but isn't looking to finance a 
landslide.
  Mrs. BOXER. Will the Senator yield for a question on the amount of 
money that a person who earns $800,000 a year gets in a tax break 
compared to the person who earns $30,000? Will she answer that 
question?
  Mrs. HUTCHISON. Yes, I will answer that question because the Senator 
from California raises a good point. You have to look, in an across-
the-board tax cut, at what people are paying in taxes. A family of four 
who makes $30,000 doesn't pay taxes. I am glad they don't.
  Mrs. BOXER. They certainly do pay taxes. Under your plan, they get 
back $121 of their hard-earned income. Under your plan, the $800,000 
person gets back $22,000. If you earn a million, you get back $30,000. 
I think when the Senator says hard-working Americans, she is talking 
about, in their plan, hard-working, very wealthy Americans, 
unfortunately, leaving out the bulk of the people.
  Mrs. HUTCHISON. Actually, I think the Senator from California is 
overlooking the fact that everyone gets an across-the-board tax cut. In 
fact, in the Senate plan, it is weighted toward the lower levels 
because you only have the 1-percent decrease in the 15-percent tax 
rate.
  The average person who pays hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxes 
is going to receive about $400 in tax relief in the Senate plan. The 
House plan is different. The House plan gives 10 percent across the 
board based on how much you pay, which I think is fair. I think 
everyone should get the benefit according to what they have paid.
  The Senate plan is very heavily weighted. I am surprised the Senator 
from California would oppose something that does help people at the 
lower end of the scale.
  Mrs. BOXER. I say to my friend, read the Citizens for Tax Justice 
(CTJ) estimate. If you earn $30,000, you get back $121. That is it. If 
you earn $800,000, according to CTJ, you get back an average of 
$22,000.
  Mrs. HUTCHISON. How much does the person pay at $30,000, and how much 
does the person pay at $800,000?
  Mrs. BOXER. They pay sales taxes. They pay income taxes. I say to my 
friend, this bill is so unfair to the average working person that the 
wealthy people get back twice as much as someone working full time on 
the minimum wage. I look forward to this debate.
  Mrs. HUTCHISON. I look forward to the debate as well. I think it is 
very important that we give across-the-board tax cuts, and I think 
everything that we can give back to the people who earn it is something 
I am going to support.
  Mr. ALLARD addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Enzi). The Senator from Colorado.
  Mr. ALLARD. Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Texas for her 
remarks, and I also thank the two Senators from Wyoming for their 
remarks this morning regarding tax cuts.
  Our economy has been doing well. It is an unprecedented time of 
economic growth. Whenever our economy does well, everybody does well. 
People who are poor do well. You can break it out

[[Page 17852]]

to any type of economic group you want, but everybody does well because 
the total tide comes up.
  I happen to believe our economy is doing well because we have worked 
hard in the last decade, decade and a half, to hold down taxes, to 
reduce the regulatory burden, and to promote good economic growth.
  The last effort by the Republicans in the Congress to make sure we 
continue to have good, strong economic growth in this country was when 
we dropped the capital gains rate. Nobody is talking about the profound 
impact that reducing the capital gains rate has had on this country's 
economic growth. Historically, every time we have dropped capital 
gains, whether it was during the Kennedy administration or whether it 
was during the Reagan administration--in some cases, I have seen that 
happen in my own State of Colorado--revenues to the Federal Government 
increase.
  Today tax revenues to the Federal Government are at a historic high. 
There is a windfall. There is more money coming into the Federal 
Government than any of us would have imagined. I think we need to give 
back some change to the American people. It is their money. They worked 
hard to earn the money. Consequently, I think they should be the 
primary recipient of a windfall.
  The people of Colorado were blessed because a Republican legislature, 
with a Republican Governor, returned dollars that came in unexpectedly 
as revenues to the State of Colorado. They returned it to the taxpayers 
of Colorado, the people who earn the money, who pay taxes. I happen to 
think my State of Colorado, under their leadership, has set a great 
example for the country. I certainly hope this Congress will move 
forward with a meaningful tax break that will make a difference in 
people's lives.
  We hear a lot of figures thrown around here on the floor. We just 
heard an example of some of the numbers that had been thrown around 
this morning and then this afternoon about what is happening to our 
budget.
  We have figures that have come out of OMB. We have figures that have 
come out of CBO. Let's just take one agency so we are comparing apples 
with apples and oranges with oranges. I don't think it is fair to pick 
some of the figures out of OMB and then some of the figures out of CBO 
and make comparisons. We need to go with one agency.
  Let's make a comparison between what the President has done with his 
plan and the Democrat Party, and what the Republican leadership is 
pushing for. Let's take the figures from the Congressional Budget 
Office and see what they look like, comparing the President's budget 
with what the Republicans are putting together and what they would like 
to see happen for the future of America.
  The President's budget, as reported in the latest report issued by 
CBO, on July 21, 1999, would leave a public debt of $1.80 trillion in 
2009. When you compare that to the Republican proposal, it is over $200 
billion higher than the amount left under the congressional budget 
resolution and the tax cut.
  Let's look at the President's budget in terms of the total surplus 
under CBO's scoring. CBO says the President's budget saves just 67 
percent of the total surplus. Now, that compares to a 75-percent saving 
of the total surplus by the congressional budget resolution and tax cut 
on the Republican side. President Clinton's budget contains $1 trillion 
in new spending. I think this issue is really more about spending than 
about taxes. The President wants to have the money so he can continue 
to spend more and more. We have heard from the big spenders. They would 
much rather increase spending than cut taxes. I think we ought to cut 
taxes instead of increasing spending.
  President Clinton's budget, again, contains $1 trillion in new 
spending. That is 25 percent larger than the Republicans' $792 billion 
reconciliation tax cut. President Clinton's budget increases taxes by 
$100 billion over the next 10 years, according to the CBO report, in 
contrast to the largest middle-class tax cut since Ronald Reagan that 
is being offered by the Republicans. President Clinton's budget spends 
the Social Security surplus, the off-budget surplus, for fiscal years 
2000, 2004, and 2005 by a total of $29 billion. Now, that is in 
contrast to the congressional budget resolution and tax cut where the 
Social Security trust fund is not raided at all in any year.
  Even Democrats don't agree necessarily with their own President on 
his obsessive stand against tax cuts. I can think of one problem to 
which a Democrat, a friend of mine with whom I serve on the 
Intelligence Committee, who also happens to be on the Finance 
Committee, refers. He says: ``To me, cutting taxes when we have $3 
trillion more coming in than we forecast in the neighborhood''--he is 
talking about his $800 billion tax proposal--``is hardly what I call an 
outrageous, irresponsible move.''
  Some of the Members of the Senate on the other side who have been 
talking this morning are talking about more spending as opposed to 
wanting to cut taxes. They say they are willing to run on that agenda. 
I am willing to take our agenda as Republicans and put it up against 
what the President is proposing in his plan for the American people. 
This Republican Congress, I think, has the right message and has the 
right approach for protecting the future of America.
  I think this is great. I am willing to brag about the fact that we 
protect every cent of Social Security's $1.9 trillion surplus in every 
year, which adheres to the spending agreement reached with the 
President in 1997. It also leaves $277 billion to finance emergencies 
and other priorities, like Medicare and prescription drugs, or simply 
additional debt reduction, yet still proposes returning $792 billion of 
the $1 trillion personal income tax overpayment to the taxpayers--I 
will run on that. I would be glad to run against any Democrat who would 
come up and say that he supports the President's plan which proposes to 
increase taxes by $100 billion over the next 10 years, a plan that, 
despite the largest Federal budget surplus in history, wants to 
increase taxes, wants $1.1 trillion more spending than a Congress which 
is adhering to the 1997 budget agreement, which raids Social Security 
for $30 billion over the next 10 years, which retires over $200 billion 
less in public debt than the Congress, and which would still not 
provide a single cent in net tax relief, despite a $1 trillion personal 
income tax overpayment.
  I would be glad to run on that. It amazes me that as we get closer to 
the election, more and more of the debate gets to be toward cutting 
taxes. But when we are out from the election, then people criticize 
Republicans. Other Members in this body, on the other side, criticize 
Republicans for trying to do the responsible thing and recognize that 
the windfall that is coming into the Federal Government, the windfall 
that is coming into the States, actually belongs to the people. They 
are the ones who worked hard and the ones who earned it.
  I want to come down on the side of many of my colleagues on the 
Republican side who have argued for a tax cut. I think we can do that 
and pay down the debt. As Senator Enzi mentioned in his comments 
earlier this morning, we can do both. We can pay down the debt. We can 
provide for a tax cut, and that is the responsible thing to do. To say 
that the responsible thing to do is more spending, I believe, is 
irresponsible.
  I want to let it be known that I am strongly in favor of a tax cut, 
and I am strongly in favor of paying down the debt. I believe we can do 
both.
  I yield the floor.

                          ____________________