[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 147 (2001), Part 3]
[Senate]
[Pages 3373-3374]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                                TAX CUTS

  Mr. WELLSTONE. Mr. President, I will return to the bankruptcy bill. 
We marked up an education bill in the HELP Committee. There were a 
number of us who said we will vote for the bill out of committee in 
part because I do think Senator Jeffords, Senator Kennedy, and others 
did yeoman work in trying to work together, and in part because there 
are some parts of this bill that are very important.
  For my own part, for several years now, I have been trying to get us 
to adopt legislation which deals with children who witness violence in 
their homes. There has been, thank God, more of a focus on the violence 
against women--sometimes men, almost always women. Every 13 seconds 
during the day, a woman is battered. Home should be a safe place.
  There has not been a whole lot of focus on children who witness this 
violence and the ways in which it affects their work in schools. All 
too often, these children fall between the cracks.
  An amendment was adopted to bring together out of the schools some 
critical support services for these children.
  I want to repeat what I said during the committee markup, which is, 
if this bill, the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary 
Education Act, comes to the floor before we have had an honest and 
thorough discussion of the budget and before we have some idea of the 
context of the tax cuts to the budget, then I will be in strong 
opposition. I hope Senators on our side and on the other side will be 
as well. Let me explain.
  First, I find the President's tax cut proposal to be Robin Hood in 
reverse. Anytime over 40 percent of the benefits go to the top 1 
percent and anytime one-third of the children in our country are living 
in homes that do not get a dime from this, and over 50 percent of 
African American children live in families that do not get a dime, and 
56 percent of Hispanic children live in homes that do not receive one 
dime from this ``tax relief'' because it is not refundable, then 
something is terribly wrong with such a piece of legislation. I do not 
think it meets any standard of fairness. That is part of the problem.
  But there is another part of the problem. I hope Democrats will be 
strong on this because the fact of the matter is, here is where you 
draw the line: If you are saying that we are going to have Robin-Hood-
in-reverse tax cuts with over 40 percent of the benefits going to the 
top 1 percent, but we are not going to be able to afford prescription 
drug costs for elderly and other families, then I think Democrats draw 
a line there.
  If we are going to have Robin Hood in reverse, with over 40 percent 
of the benefits going to the top 1 percent, but, as a matter of fact, 
we are not going to realize the goal of leaving no child behind, and, 
as a matter of fact, we are going to have a tin-cup budget for 
education, and, as a matter of fact, we are not going to expand the 
title I program where only 30 percent of low-income children are able 
to get any help right now, and we are not going to make the kind of 
commitment to the IDEA program, children with special needs, funded at 
only 14 percent when it should be funded at the 40-percent level, or we 
are not going to make the commitment to decent, affordable child care 
so children can come to school, kindergarten ready, or we are not going 
to make a commitment to expanding health care coverage for citizens in 
our country when so many people go without health security, either 
because they have no coverage or they can't afford their coverage--it 
seems to me this is the place where Democrats can draw the line. We 
don't need to have acrimonious debate, but we do need to have 
substantive debate, I argue passionate debate.
  Frankly, I put all of my faith in people in Minnesota and around the 
country, when it comes to the question of priorities. To me, what we 
have is distorted priorities. We have a tax cut program, Robin Hood in 
reverse. Over 40 percent of the benefits are going to the top 1 
percent. There is no standard of fairness when it comes to tax relief 
for people, tax relief for families. Moreover, nobody should kid 
anybody; this will erode the revenue base and make

[[Page 3374]]

it practically impossible to make any of the investments that we say we 
are going to make when it comes to children, when it comes to 
education, when it comes to health care, when it comes to affordable 
prescription drug costs.
  The vast majority of the people in the country, if they understand 
this is the choice, want to see us do more by way of investing in 
education, investing in children, investing in health care, investing 
in their families, investing in our communities.
  This will become the axis of the debate of the Senate and I think 
American politics. I believe it is very important the Democrats draw 
the line in a very firm way.
  I say to my colleague, Senator Grassley, I have some amendments I am 
ready to introduce to the bankruptcy bill. I asked unanimous consent I 
be able to proceed. I assume that is all right with the manager.
  Mr. GRASSLEY. I wonder if the Senator will provide copies of the 
amendments. We want to know with what we are working.
  Mr. WELLSTONE. I am more than pleased to provide copies. Many 
requests are unreasonable, but this is not.

                          ____________________