[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 17]
[House]
[Page 23286]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                          TAXING AND SPENDING

  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, we heard some earlier interesting 
statements from the Republican side of the aisle, and one gentleman 
talked about a once-proud party. I guess he was referring to the 
Republicans and the fact that they used to have a commitment to 
protecting Federal taxpayers and for fiscal responsibility, but no 
longer.
  Now, they keep talking about the Democrats taxing and spending. 
Excuse me? Who runs the White House, the United States House of 
Representatives with an iron hand, and the United States Senate? The 
Republicans. They are in charge of everything. It is the President who 
is submitting budgets that are being approved by Republicans that are 
running up huge and growing deficits.
  They are trying to say, oh, this year was great; it was only $312 
billion, only the third largest deficit in history. Except they forget 
to tell people they borrowed the whole $180 billion surplus out of 
Social Security and spent that, too; and, in fact, some of it went to 
tax cuts for rich people that was paid for by working people with their 
Social Security money that is supposed to pay for the future of that 
program.
  They say, well, it is the darn Democrats. No, it is not the darn 
Democrats. It is the Republicans who control everything who have 
brought up $8 trillion of debt, a 60 percent increase in the 5 years 
George Bush has been in the White House; and, no, it was not all spent 
on the war in Iraq and homeland security. A lot of it came from huge 
tax cuts to the wealthiest among us, immensely expensive tax cuts that 
go predominantly to people who earn over $311,000 a year; and they want 
to give permanent exemption of estate tax to estates over $6 million. 
They consider $100 million, $200 million, that is a small family farm 
or small business in Republicanland over here.
  Unfortunately, those tax cuts are immensely expensive, and they are 
borrowing the money to finance them and the government.
  The entire general fund of government of the United States, 
everything that government does outside of the military is paid for 
with borrowed money, $1.2 billion a day, some of it from Social 
Security. Yeah, we are borrowing some of it from ourselves. We are 
borrowing a heck of a lot of it from China, Japan, and other foreign 
interests; and we are adding this mountain of debt and we are pushing 
it forward to our kids and our grandkids. In their vision, the wealthy 
would not share in the burden. They will not help pay that debt because 
they will be the beneficiary of massive tax cuts.
  What they were going to bring to the floor today was so embarrassing 
they could not quite do it. They were actually going to increase the 
deficit. Under the guise of paying for Katrina, they were going to cut 
programs like student loans, $9 billion; Medicare for seniors; Medicaid 
for needy people and seniors and other essential programs. But they 
were actually going to cut those programs to pay for more, guess what, 
tax cuts for the wealthiest among us.
  Are the wealthy really hurting that much? Well, actually no. IRS data 
that came out last week say that 99 percent of the people in America 
saw their real incomes decline last year; but 1 percent, those who 
earned over $311,000, saw a real increase. But that is not even the 
real thing.
  The real thing was one-tenth of 1 percent, those who earned over $1.3 
million a year, saw a phenomenal increase in their incomes, mostly due 
to tax cuts that are being paid for by borrowing on the backs of 
working people and Social Security. They have the gall to come to the 
floor and say it is the Democrats who want to tax working people.
  The only working people they are concerned about are people who earn 
over $311,000 a year, the investor class; but the investor class also 
happens to be the contributor class, the people who can write out those 
$2,100 checks twice a year to their campaign accounts or the even 
bigger checks to their party accounts or to the Presidential campaigns. 
That is who they are taking care of.
  They are borrowing money from working people. They are bankrupting 
the country. They are undermining the future of Social Security; and 
now they want to pull the rug out from under kids who want to get a 
higher education and from seniors who need a little bit of help with 
medical care in their old age. They are going to pretend that they are 
fiscally responsible.
  April Fools has come early to Congress if anybody believes that 
malarkey. It is just extraordinary to me, and the boys keep turning the 
volume up and keep listening to a little too much Rush Limbaugh over 
there. We are going to counter them with the facts.
  The facts are they have run $8 trillion of debt, $27,000 for every 
American. They are borrowing $1.2 billion a day to run the government; 
and now they want to cut essential programs, student loans, Medicare, 
Medicaid and other programs, to finance more tax cuts for the wealthy, 
more trickle down.
  Our people have been trickled down on long enough, and more than 
enough. It is time to change the priorities around here, and that is 
what we are fighting to do.

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