[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 149 (2003), Part 8]
[House]
[Pages 10541-10542]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




             ANOTHER VIEW OF THE PRESIDENT'S ECONOMIC PLAN

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to the order of the House of 
January 7, 2003, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Brown) is recognized 
during morning hour debates for 5 minutes.
  Mr. BROWN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, recently President Bush traveled to 
my home State of Ohio to sell his tax cuts. He went to a manufacturing 
company of I believe the largest Republican contributor in Ohio to 
extol the value of his tax cuts. He met with the executives of that 
company who will enjoy large tax cuts. He did not talk specifically 
about what individual workers who make 20 and 30 and 40 and $50,000 a 
year will get, but understand as the President came to Ohio and talked 
about this tax cut, his 500-plus-billion-dollar tax cut, that half of 
that tax cut will go to people whose average income is $968,000 a year. 
So half of that tax cut will go to people who on the average make about 
$1 million a year.
  The President now has shifted from talking about the tax cut because 
that has fallen on deaf ears, even on the ears of a Republican Senator 
in Ohio who has said ``no'' to this tax cut, thinking it throws the 
budget way out of balance, thinking that the tax cuts go far too much 
to the wealthiest citizens and not enough to middle-income Americans. 
The President now has shifted his talk to talk about jobs, saying that 
the Bush economic plan is not so much about tax cuts but is about job 
creation. What he does not say is since he took office, we have lost 
2.6 million jobs in this country, most of them manufacturing jobs. We 
have lost manufacturing jobs literally every single month of the Bush 
presidency, something that has never happened since we have been 
keeping records on those kinds of things. There has been negative 
economic growth and negative economic job activity since the President 
has taken office. That has not happened in the last 50 years. At the 
same time the President's similar kind of tax cut which passed his 
first year in office is not paying the kind of benefits that he hoped. 
He 2 years ago asked Congress, asked the American people for a similar 
economic package to the one he asks for today. Yet today he is asking 
for it again even though we have lost 2.6 million jobs and we have lost 
manufacturing jobs in this country every single month since the 
President took office. The President wants to give tax cuts to the 
wealthiest citizens in this country, leaving a few hundred dollars for 
people making 40 or 50 or 60 or $70,000 a year, giving 10 to $15,000 to 
people making $1 million a year.
  At the same time the President wants to restrict one of the best 
bipartisan both job creation and poverty programs that this country has 
had rewarding work, and that is the earned income tax credit. The 
earned income tax credit was passed by a Democratic Congress with a 
Republican President in 1975, expanded in the eighties by a Republican 
President and a Democratic Congress, and now President Bush wants to 
restrict the earned income tax credit. People making 20, 25, $30,000 a 
year under the earned income tax credit will get about $1,000 a year 
more back in their taxes than they would get otherwise. It is a way to 
reward work. These are people that have full-time jobs, often without 
health care, often single parents, people that are struggling that need 
that kind of help. So the President wants to give huge tax cuts to 
people making $1 million a year and take away much of the tax benefits 
under the earned income tax credit that people making 20, 25, $30,000 a 
year make.

[[Page 10542]]

  Get this, though. The IRS now has decided to change in the last 5 
years, under Republican leadership in this House and Senate, to change 
the frequency by which they audit tax returns. If you are making 
$30,000 a year and you have filed for the earned income tax credit, one 
out of 64 of you will be audited by the IRS. But if you make $100,000, 
only one out of 120 of you will be audited by the IRS. If you are even 
higher income than that, then only one out of 400 of you will be 
audited by the IRS. So the IRS is going after people making 20, 30, 40, 
$50,000 a year while allowing people by and large to skate if they are 
making a half million or a million dollars a year. Then on top of that 
the President wants to give a tax cut to the wealthiest people in this 
country.
  The largest newspaper in my district, the Akron Beacon Journal, had 
this to say about the earned income tax credit this morning: ``The 
President wants Americans to spend their money to boost the economy. He 
wants to create jobs. The earned income tax credit delivers on both 
fronts.'' That is the importance of the earned income tax credit, of 
keeping it in place, of keeping the eligibility standards where they 
are, of encouraging more people to file for the earned income tax 
credit. That will help stimulate the economy. That goes with the 
general Democratic plan on economic stimulus, not simply giving tax 
breaks to the richest people in the country hoping that some of the 
money trickles down for job creation. That clearly has not worked. 
Instead, the Democratic plan through extending unemployment, through 
middle-class tax breaks, through helping small businesses, through 
economic stimulus of building highways and bridges and all that, that 
is what will put people back to work.

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