[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 156 (2010), Part 13]
[House]
[Pages 19353-19354]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                         TAX CUT REPERCUSSIONS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Florida (Mr. Grayson) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. GRAYSON. Mr. Speaker, here in the House and in the Senate and 
with the President's pen, we make policy for America. We make foreign 
policy. We make security policy. We make health policy and 
environmental policy. And we make economic policy. And it's time to 
take a close look at exactly what the tax cuts for the rich have done 
for us for the past 9 years because now we are going to make policy for 
not just the next 2 years, but I believe for far longer than that.
  Let's simply take a look at the 9 lean years that we have experienced 
under tax cuts for the rich and compare them to the 9 fat years that 
preceded that. The first thing you'll know, which you can see from this 
chart here, is that in the 9 previous years before we enacted the Bush 
tax cuts for the rich, 23 million jobs were created. Since we enacted 
those tax cuts for the rich, we have lost 2 million jobs in America.
  The next chart shows that the average unemployment rate as a result 
rose from 5.5 percent approximately to well over 6 percent after we 
enacted the Bush tax cuts. So often I have heard that the Bush tax cuts 
for the rich will somehow create jobs when the record is directly to 
the contrary. In fact, it doesn't only affect people who work, it 
affects everyone.
  If you look at the net worth of this country, the net worth of 
America, the value of all of our schools, our homes, our 401(k)s, our 
small businesses, our cars, our furnishings, everything that we own in 
America, according to the Federal Reserve, in the 9 years before we 
enacted the Bush tax cuts, home values in America rose by 37 percent. 
In the 9 years after we enacted the Bush tax cuts, our home values in 
America rose only 13 percent. And as a result of that--because our 
homes are, for many of us, the most valuable thing that we own--as a 
result of that, our net worth as a country increased by 93 percent 
before we enacted the Bush tax cuts and by only 26 percent after we 
enacted the Bush tax cuts. Now I think that's a very important 
statistic. We

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are taking into account the rich and the poor, the black and the white, 
the male and the female, people all across the country. When we didn't 
have the Bush tax cuts, our net worth as a country increased by 93 
percent. When we did, it increased only by 26 percent.
  Now, there's been a lot of discussion lately about the deficit, the 
debt. If you look at what the effect was on the deficit and on the 
debt, you will find that in the 9 years before we enacted the Bush tax 
cuts, we had on average a 2.37 percent surplus in the Federal budget. 
In those 9 years, we actually had a surplus on the average of 2.3 
percent of gross domestic product. And since the Bush tax cuts were 
enacted, we have had a deficit of 8.5 percent on the average each year.
  We all know the dramatic effect that the decline in the economy has 
had on the poor and on the middle class. But let's take a short moment 
to look at what effect it actually had on the rich. Before we enacted 
the Bush tax cuts, the S&P 500 index--the most broad measure of stock 
market performance in the United States, 500 different companies--the 
S&P 500 increased in those 9 years by an amazing 285 percent. Now, 
since more than half of all stocks in America are owned by the top 1 
percent, the most wealthy Americans, that means that the most wealthy 
Americans benefited by not having the Bush tax cuts to the tune of a 
285 percent increase in the stock market.
  In contrast to that, since the Bush tax cuts were enacted, the stock 
market has actually gone down over the past 9 years by 11 percent. So I 
ask you whether you are working, whether you are not working, whether 
you are poor, whether you are middle class, whether you are rich, isn't 
it obvious what will happen if we extend these tax cuts any further? 
Whether it's for 1 year or for 2 years or for another 9 lean years. I 
think the answer is obvious. Fewer jobs, higher unemployment, a lower 
value to our homes, lower value to the Nation's net worth, and a drop 
in the stock market. That's the future that we face if we extend these 
pernicious tax cuts further.

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