[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 149 (2003), Part 10]
[House]
[Page 13528]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                    TAX CUTS LEAVE OUT WORKING POOR

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentlewoman from California (Ms. Solis) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Ms. SOLIS. Mr. Speaker, there has been a lot of talk about what the 
recent tax cuts will do for our economy, and I would like to talk to 
Members about what they will not do and who they will not help.
  The $350 billion in tax cuts leaves out the working poor, and many, 
in the State of California, working families. Republicans rejected a 
Democratic attempt to try to get child tax credits to low-income 
families earning less than $10,500. To add insult to injury, last-
minute changes made by Republicans also will prevent families with 
incomes between $10,500 and $26,625, and that includes about 11.9 
million children, and they will not receive any kind of a child tax 
credit or be eligible for one. One out of every four families in my 
district in California will get no child tax credit.
  Families like this one pictured here, who live in my district in East 
Los Angeles, Ruben and Teresa, whose son is proudly serving us right 
now in Iraq, this family makes $24,000 a year. They will get no tax 
break, no tax break. Yet somehow Republicans found $90 billion to give 
to 200,000 millionaire families. That money will not make it to my 
district, no way, since 99 percent of the families there earn less than 
$200,000.
  Republicans left out all of these families to accommodate tax cuts on 
dividends that go mostly to rich and wealthy people. The tax cuts leave 
out married tax filers who happen to be living in poverty. The 
Republicans postponed marriage penalty relief under the earned income 
tax credit which is claimed by many working families earning $34,000 or 
less. This means that working-class married tax filers are treated as 
second-class citizen.
  The tax cuts leave out the people of California, and although 
California suffers from the largest budget deficit in the country, it 
is ranked at 43rd in terms of per capita State aid allotted by the 
Republican tax bill.
  Mr. Speaker, 31 percent of California families are not helped by the 
child tax credit. That is 2.4 million children in California alone, and 
I mean all children; and 47 percent of Californians will get a total 
tax cut of less than $100. That is barely enough to take them to the 
movies, buy a pizza and maybe have some extra spending money to buy 
book supplies, if that.
  Mr. Speaker, 28 percent get nothing at all. It is a sign of a grossly 
skewed priority by Republicans that would leave a lot of people out, 
yet they give $100,000 tax breaks to the largest SUVs, which pollute 
our air, keep us dependent on foreign oil, and spew out greenhouse 
gases.
  So while the typical millionaire gets over $93,500 in tax cuts and 
another $100,000 break for their huge SUVs, working-class people are 
left sitting in the smog with almost nothing in their pockets. If we 
had only given those millionaires $88,000 instead of $93,000, we could 
afford to give the child tax credit to all families. That means 140,000 
hard-working families in my district would have gotten some kind of tax 
relief.
  Democrats tried to offer an economic stimulus plan with an immediate 
increase in the child tax credit, marriage penalty relief for all, and 
the expansion of the 10 percent tax bracket, and Democrats tried to put 
money in the pockets of working-class people. These are the people who 
would stimulate our economy, pull it out of the tailspin it has been in 
ever since this President took office.
  With more than 2.7 million jobs lost in the last 2 years, we in 
Congress should be declaring war against poverty. Instead, Republicans 
have declared a war against working families, families like this who 
send their children to serve in our wars. We need to change that, and 
we need to support and extend benefits for those hard-working 
Americans, especially families like this that right now are hoping that 
their son will come home, and even he would not be eligible for a tax 
credit because he makes less than the amount required under this bill 
that was passed by the Republicans.

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