[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 149 (2003), Part 10]
[House]
[Pages 13530-13531]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                      REPUBLICAN TAX CUT IS UNFAIR

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Oregon (Mr. DeFazio) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, after the passage of the largest tax cut in 
history 2 years ago, the President began to talk about a little glitch 
in that, and a glitch that no one could have anticipated, not the 
Republican White House which wrote it, the Republican Senate which 
passed it, and the Republican House which passed it who deliberately 
wrote the glitch in, which was, gee, the estate tax would only expire 
for 1 year and then if you did not die during that 1 year, you would be 
subject to the full estate tax again. And a number of other taxes were 
phased back in.
  Well, it was not a glitch. They knew about it. They had to do it so 
they would not bust the bank and that was when they were predicting a 
surplus. But guess what now? Whoops, here we go again. There is a 
little glitch in the second largest tax cut in American history passed 
at the time of the largest deficit in American history 2 weeks ago in 
the dark of the night, personally written and negotiated by Vice 
President Cheney and the Republican leadership of the House and the 
Senate.
  How could they have known that they left out half of the American 
people? I mean, after all, it was Ari Fleischer who said, ``And, of 
course, for people in the 10 percent bracket, they benefit the most and 
that's the lowest income workers in America.'' He went on to say that 
it certainly does deliver tax relief to the people who pay income 
taxes. The President surrounds himself with waitresses. But 
unfortunately it is all a lie because those people are not going to get 
tax cuts under this bill. In fact, 51 percent of income-tax-paying 
Oregonians will get no cut under this bill and about 49 percent of 
income-tax-paying Americans will not get any cut under this bill. 7.6 
million people who are in this 10 percent tax bracket that Mr. 
Fleischer referred to who were supposed to get a lot of benefits are 
going to get zero, zilch, nada under this bill. But every millionaire 
is guaranteed $93,500 or more under this bill.
  To even heap more irony on top of the injustice, the $93,500 for each 
millionaire will come from FICA taxes, payroll taxes paid by wage-
earning Americans. Wage-earning Americans pay about 7 percent of the 
first dollar they earn and every dollar they earn up to about $88,000 
on FICA tax. In fact, more than half of American workers pay more in 
FICA taxes to the Federal Government than they do income taxes. No 
relief for them. And, hey, guess what? We have really suckered you, 
because we are going to borrow every penny of the FICA taxes you have 
paid that you thought was going into a trust fund, in fact, a lockbox, 
passed seven times while the Republicans have been in charge of this 
House. Seven times we passed a lockbox for Social Security. Well, we 
cannot afford a lockbox anymore. It is busted open and robbed. Empty. 
That money is going to be used to finance the tax cut and replaced with 
IOUs. So the millionaire who gets a $93,500 benefit under this bill, 
they pay a FICA tax at the rate of .7 percent, one-tenth of the rate at 
which a wage-earning

[[Page 13531]]

teacher or sales clerk pays that same tax, because they do not pay it 
on any income over $88,000 a year.

                              {time}  1845

  So $912,000 of their income is exempt from FICA tax, and the poor 
person who works for minimum wage or for a decent wage is paying FICA 
tax of 7 percent on every penny earned.
  Finally, they made much hay on the fact that they were going to do so 
much with the child credit. Of course, it was temporary and going to 
expire in 2 years, but that is probably a glitch and they would have 
discovered that later.
  But there was another little glitch. Most Americans, in fact, all 
Americans who earn between $10,500 and $26,625 will not get the child 
care credit. That is an awful lot of people who have an awful lot of 
need. That includes 11.9 million children.
  So, all in all, what we have here is one of the biggest scams in 
history. Never before has this country in a time of huge deficit 
borrowing, and that is how this is being paid for, borrowed so much 
money from so many wage-earning Americans to give to so very few at the 
top under the premise that somehow those really rich people might 
invest or spend that money in a way to give those working people jobs 
so they can pay more FICA taxes that can be transferred to them in next 
year's tax cuts, which the President has already targeted toward those 
who earn over $1 million a year, to help them have more to contribute 
at election time in what is expected to be a record expensive 
Presidential election.
  The system is incredibly corrupt.

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