[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 149 (2003), Part 10]
[House]
[Pages 13348-13349]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                            CHILD TAX CREDIT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from California (Mr. George Miller) is recognized for 5 
minutes.
  Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, politics in the making 
of public policy is about choices. Every day we are called upon to make 
a choice, but a horrible choice was made by the Republican majority 
when they wrote the most recent tax bill, a horrible choice that works 
against millions of families and the children in those families as the 
Republicans decided that they would not allow those families, families 
making between $10,500 a year and $26,000 a year, they would not allow 
them to have the increase in the child tax credit. A $400 a year 
increase to offset the cost of raising children, that this Congress 
made a decision about over many years, was proper to do with families 
to help hold families together, to allow some people to stay home with 
their children if they chose to do so, the purpose of that credit.
  Rather than spend the $3 billion on those individuals, they chose to 
spend

[[Page 13349]]

it on people making over $1 million a year. People making over $1 
million a year will now get $93,000 a year in a tax cut. If we had 
chosen to take care of those 12 million children who will not get the 
tax cut because their families earn less than $26,000 a year, those 
same millionaires would have gotten a tax cut of $88,000.
  The Republicans made a choice. They chose America's millionaires over 
America's children. Somehow they decided that the children in upper-
income families and middle-class families are more important than those 
families who are working their tails off going to work every day, all 
year long and still coming home earning between $10,000 and $26,000. 
They made a decision that they were going to support the Bush-Cheney 
class in America over the working class in America. They made a 
decision that they were going to support millionaires over the children 
of America.
  They said when they were caught at these shenanigans over the last 
few days, when the press discovered what was in the legislation, they 
said, well, we designed it only for those people who are paying income 
tax; they are the only ones who should benefit from that. It is rather 
interesting because they decided they were also going to give the tax 
benefits of this bill to a number of corporations who pay no income 
taxes, corporations that have fled America, changed their corporate 
citizenship for the sole purposes of not paying taxes, and yet we would 
give them additional tax breaks under this bill.
  They wanted to say that they wanted to end the double taxation on 
dividends and that corporations that paid taxes could get a deduction 
for dividends. By the time the bill was done, corporations that have 
paid no taxes will get a deduction for dividends, but if someone were a 
poor family, if they were a poor family and they are working every day 
and they are making between $10,000 and $26,000 a year and they have 
children, they are not going to get the increase in that deduction. But 
these people do pay taxes.
  The Republicans have it all wrong. They have it all wrong in 
fairness. They have it all wrong in greed. They have it all wrong in 
the value of our children and our families in this Nation. This is an 
incredibly harmful policy to those families who are struggling in and 
around these wages.
  The Republicans will not increase the minimum wage to help them 
support their families. They will not give them the child tax credit to 
help them support their families. They will not increase the Earned 
Income Tax credit to help them support their families. Poor people just 
are not entitled to this. What they get to make is they get to make an 
increased sacrifice on behalf of the rich.
  Somebody once said, one would think the Republicans think that the 
rich have too little money and the poor have too much. It is an 
incredible policy. The Republicans rail against class warfare, and they 
declared war on the very survival of these families who are working at 
the margins. We see them every day. These are people who work hard in 
difficult jobs, in jobs that most people do not want. They get up and 
they ride transit, and they go to work and they work and they work and 
they come home, and at the end of the year they continue to be poor.
  Past Congresses gave them the child tax credit, and this year when we 
decided we would give an increase in the child tax credit, we did not 
decide. The Republicans decided in the back rooms, they decided they 
would declare their own private war, their own private class warfare on 
these individuals. They decided to do it on the last night, in the back 
room, with the lights turned out and with Vice President Cheney casting 
the deciding vote, who now declares he is ignorant on this. Then how 
did he vote for it? How did he vote for it?
  Class warfare, the most mean-spirited, the most greedy action of 
class warfare we have seen was just committed by the Republican Party 
in the tax bill against struggling, working, lower-income families in 
this country.

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