[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 154 (2008), Part 1]
[House]
[Page 49]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                     TAX INCREASES HARM THE ECONOMY

  (Mr. AKIN asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. AKIN. Madam Speaker, as we start a new year, one of the things 
that we are seeing in the economy is signs of stress. The unemployment 
is rising somewhat, we see the trouble with the housing market, the 
savings and loan crisis. Over the past year, the Chairman of the Fed, 
Ben Bernanke, warned that the Democrat tax increases increasingly 
threaten our economy. Last year, the Democrats passed a $528 billion 
tax increase here in the House and proposed the mother of all tax 
increases, a $3.5 trillion tax increase, the largest in the history of 
our country.
  That is exactly the wrong medicine in an economy that is struggling. 
Instead, what we should be doing is we should be returning a portion of 
that money that people earn so that it can be invested and strengthen 
the economy and put us back on the road to recovery, just as we did in 
2001 and 2002. It's time for us to understand that tax increases are 
exactly the wrong medicine when the economy is struggling. I hope the 
Democrats remember that.

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