[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 149 (2003), Part 10]
[Senate]
[Pages 13583-13584]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                         TAX CUTS AND MEDICARE

  Mr. HARKIN. Madam President, last Thursday the New York Times of May 
29 had a front-page picture, a big, color picture on the front page, of 
the President signing the tax cut bill in the East Room of the White 
House. As I looked at this picture, I thought: This really is 
appropriate. Pictures say a thousand words. Here is a picture of the 
President signing the tax bill, and he is in the East Room, with all 
the big crystal chandeliers, all the trappings of power, and an 
audience.
  I was looking at this audience. I thought: Who are these people? I am 
looking at them all. Do you know what? This looks like the rich and the 
powerful of America sitting there with all these chandeliers and 
getting all these big tax cuts. There is not one person of color 
sitting in that audience, not one. Now, there may be. I cannot see back 
behind where the picture was taken. Maybe there was one. Maybe one of 
the ushers back there was an African American. But it just kind of 
leaps out at you that these are the people who really benefit from that 
tax cut.
  Why didn't the President take that tax cut signing down to middle 
America someplace? Why didn't he take it down to a small community of 
middle-income taxpayers? Why didn't he take it to a low-income area, 
say--well, I don't care, pick a city: Newark, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, 
Des Moines, IA, Houston, TX; maybe Detroit, MI or Flint, MI--and go to 
an area of that city that is low-income where people go to work every 
day, where they are struggling to make ends meet, where they have to 
find some child care for their kids so they can go to work to put bread 
on the table to maybe have a little bit of a decent lifestyle, and they 
are having trouble finding decent child care and other costs of raising 
children? Why didn't the President go down there and sign that tax cut 
bill?
  Well, because the sentence right under the picture says why he did 
not do that:

       Tax law omits $400 child credit for millions.

  Look at the picture: All the trappings of power, all the rich and 
powerful of America sitting in that audience. Right below it: ``Tax law 
omits $400 child credit for millions.'' One picture says a thousand 
words. And right underneath, it tells you why the President signed the 
bill in front of all these people and not out in middle America.
  So now we are just beginning to find out. We are just beginning to 
find out, as the New York Times said, that:

       Because of the formula for calculating the child care tax 
     credit, most families with incomes from $10,500 to $26,625 
     will not benefit.

  Zero, nada, nothing.

       The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal 
     group, says those families include 11.9 million children or 
     one of every six children under 17.

  Madam President, 11.9 million children left out of the tax bill.
  You don't see them sitting in the audience. You don't see single 
moms, for example, sitting in this audience when they are signing the 
tax bill, balancing a couple kids on their knees. You don't see that.

       ``I don't know why they would cut that out of the bill,'' 
     said Senator Blanche Lincoln, the Arkansas Democrat who 
     persuaded the full Senate to send the credit to many more low 
     income families before the provision was dropped in 
     conference. ``These are the people who need it the most and 
     who will spend it the most. These are the people who buy the 
     blue jeans and the detergent . . .''

  As I said, the New York Times picture and the story underneath it say 
it all.
  The Des Moines Register, closer to my home, had an editorial from May 
31: ``A Tax-Cutting Disgrace.'' This is from the Des Moines Register 
editorial:

       Congress looked out for investors in the last-minute 
     revision of the tax bill President Bush just signed into law.
       As a result, millions of low-income families won't get the 
     extra $400-a-kid check from Uncle Sam this summer.
       But most families earning $10,500 to $26,625 annually will 
     be left out. Giving them the credit would have cost about 
     $3.5 billion and would have required sending checks to some 
     who don't pay enough income taxes to deliver the credit as a 
     refund.

  People of low income work hard. They go to work every day. They may 
make just above the minimum wage, but they are not paying income taxes. 
But they have child care needs, and they are left out.

       House Republicans contend that a $350 billion cap on the 
     tax cut package didn't leave enough room to give the child 
     credit to low-income families.

  To quote the Des Moines Register: ``Nonsense.''

       They easily could have done less for the richest Americans 
     and more for Americans who barely scrape by. And it's 
     unconscionable that they didn't.

  Well, just look at that picture in the New York Times, look who is 
there. Then read the articles in the paper, read the Des Moines 
Register editorial, and you will find out what this tax bill was all 
about.
  Now we find something else out about this tax bill as we open up the 
newspaper this morning, the Washington Post from today: ``Middle Class 
Tax Share Set To Rise.'' Well, well, well. ``Studies say the burden of 
the rich to decline.''
  Here is what the Washington Post said this morning:

       Three successive tax cuts pushed by President Bush will 
     leave middle income taxpayers paying a greater share of all 
     Federal taxes by the end of the decade, according to new 
     analyses of the Bush administration's tax policy. As critics 
     of the tax cuts in 2001, 2002 and 2003 have noted, the very 
     wealthiest Americans, those earning $337,000 a year or more 
     per year, will be the greatest beneficiaries of the changes 
     in the nation's tax laws.

  So what will happen? They go on to point out, the middle class will 
pay more and more. As the rich pay less and less, the middle class will 
pay more and more of their share of taxes. Thus, ``Middle Class Tax 
Share Set To Rise.''
  That brings us to what is going on right now with Medicare. Again, 
one may wonder what the connection is between the tax cut bill and the 
problems

[[Page 13584]]

that we are confronting ahead in Social Security and Medicare. Don't 
take my word for it. Just read the Financial Times, not a Democratic 
newspaper or anything like that. The Financial Times of Friday May 30, 
front-page story: ``Bush Aware of `Crushing' Deficit Threat.'' This is 
the article. I have it blown up here in the chart, ``Bush Aware Of 
`Crushing' Deficit Threat.''
  Ari Fleischer, White House spokesperson told a press briefing.
  Listen to this quote:

       ``There is no question that Social Security and Medicare 
     are going to present [future] generations with a crushing 
     debt burden unless policymakers work seriously to reform 
     those programs.''

  Now it becomes clear. Huge tax breaks and cuts for the wealthy. The 
middle class tax share is to rise. Low-income families who have child 
care credit needs are written out. Because of the huge gap that is 
going to happen in the next 10 years because of the lack of revenues 
for the Federal Government, we are going to have problems in Social 
Security and Medicare. And so what does Mr. Fleischer say? We are not 
going to rescind the tax cuts. We are not going to ask the wealthiest 
to pay a greater burden. No, we are going to reform Social Security and 
Medicare.
  What does he mean by ``reform''? That is just a fancy, two-syllable 
word for a one-syllable word, ``cuts.'' Reform to Mr. Fleischer, the 
Bush White House, and the Republicans means cuts--cut Social Security, 
cut Medicare. Again, don't take my word for it. On May 21, the third 
ranking Republican in the Senate, my friend from Pennsylvania, Senator 
Santorum, said:

       I believe the standard benefit, the traditional Medicare 
     program, has to be phased out.

  Senator Robert Bennett, on March 19, the Senator from Utah said:

       Medicare is a disaster. . . . We have to understand that 
     Medicare is going to have to be overhauled. . . . Let's 
     create a whole new system.

  And then to kind of wrap it all up, yesterday at a hearing here on 
the Hill, before the Senate Special Committee on Aging, who did they 
have as a lead-off witness? Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who, in 
1995, said Medicare should wither on the vine.
  Well, it looks as if the withering is taking place, the huge tax 
cuts, quotes by my fellow Senators from the other side of the aisle. 
They want to get rid of Medicare. They want to phase it out. They want 
to take all the elderly and put them in private HMOs. There isn't one 
Medicare HMO in the entire State of Iowa. So it is an anti-rural, anti-
small-State approach, but you see the pattern. Wither on the vine, huge 
tax cuts that benefit the wealthy, no child credit to help those with 
low income, and as the Post pointed out this morning, a greater share 
of the taxes to the Government are going to be borne by the middle 
class. What are more middle-class programs than Medicare and Social 
Security? Those are the middle-class programs. Those are the programs 
we have had for years to make sure that people who work hard and play 
by the rules, who raise their families, when they reach retirement age 
can retire with dignity and decent health care coverage.
  Now we see the game plan of the Republicans and of this President: 
Cut Social Security. Cut Medicare. That is what their reform means.
  Now they are going to use the argument that we will not have enough 
money to pay for the Medicare benefits, to pay for a decent 
prescription drug benefit, and to keep Social Security benefits going. 
We don't have enough money. Why? It all went to the wealthy. As I 
pointed out on the Senate floor during the tax cut debate, the 
projected shortfall in Social Security over the next 75 years would be 
more than made up by the shortfall in revenue of the tax cut bills, if 
they are extended as the President desires.
  So you have to ask yourself, what is more important to the middle 
class in America? Is it making sure that Warren Buffett, the third 
richest man in the world, gets a $310 million tax break, which he 
himself said was wrong and that he should not be getting? He said the 
tax cut ought to go to the middle class, and I commend him for his 
honesty and forthrightness. What is more important? Is it giving him a 
$310 million tax break or is it more important to the middle class, to 
make sure we have a decent prescription drug benefit, to make sure we 
have a decent Medicare Program and a sound Social Security program? 
That is what is important to the middle class. That is what has been 
taken away by the tax cut bill. That is what the Republicans are trying 
to take away with cuts to Medicare, and that is what they are going to 
try to continue to take away with further cuts to Social Security. That 
is why we have to be out here to fight every day for the middle class 
in America.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Cornyn). The Senator from Michigan is 
recognized.

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