[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 17]
[House]
[Page 23079]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                 APRIL FOOL'S DAY COMES EARLY TO HOUSE

  (Mr. DeFAZIO asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. DeFAZIO. Madam Speaker, April Fool's Day has come early to the 
United States House of Representatives. The Republicans are in charge. 
They control everything, and in the last 5 years our debt has increased 
60 percent to $8 trillion. That is $27,000 for every American. Well, 
not for every American, only for working Americans because the rich are 
exempt from taxes.
  What they are talking about here, the hard-working Americans, the 
only people who got a pay raise last year, the people who earn over 
$1.3 million a year.
  Madam Speaker, 99 percent of the people in this country had their 
real incomes go down last year, but not that group. That is who the 
Republicans want to protect here. It is trickle-down economics. They 
say we need it now more than ever. How else are we going to recover 
from Hurricane Katrina? They want to give the wealthiest among us, the 
top one-tenth of 1 percent, the millionaires, tax breaks, and they will 
trickle-down on America.
  Well, the people of the Southeast have been trickled down upon. And, 
in fact, some of them drowned because of the incompetence of these 
people.

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