[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 158 (2012), Part 11]
[House]
[Page 15303]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                         OLD REPUBLICAN REFRAIN

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Oregon (Mr. DeFazio) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DeFAZIO. Well, the Republican refrain is quite familiar: these 
tax increases will cause economic devastation, a recession, millions of 
lost jobs. Is that today's fiscal cliff? No. Actually, that's the 
Republicans in opposing the Clinton-era tax increases, 1993, opposed by 
every Republican.
  Did their predicted doom and gloom come true? Well, kind of not, 
actually. We balanced the budget, we paid down debt, and we had 3.8 
percent unemployment while the millionaires and billionaires were 
paying a slightly higher rate of taxes.
  Fast forward to today's debate: restore the Clinton-era tax rates to 
millionaires and billionaires. Republicans have dusted off the nineties 
rhetoric--economic collapse, devastation, at least 700,000 jobs. The 
job-creator millionaires and billionaires, they're living on the edge. 
They have no discretionary income. Any modest increase in taxes to them 
will stop them from making productive, job-creating investments, like 
the hundreds of millions of dollars they spent on super PACs in the 
last election to try and elect a President and a Congress that will 
bend to their will and lower their taxes even further while cutting 
middle-income families' programs that are essential, like Social 
Security and student financial aid.
  Now, after their impassioned defense of tax breaks for millionaires 
and billionaires, Republicans do have a second priority--they're not a 
one-note party, so you've got to give them credit for that--and that is 
to somehow kill Social Security, which they've never supported. They 
think it makes people lazy. Well, there are millionaires and 
billionaires that don't ever expect they will need it, so they don't 
care.
  And under the guise of deficit reduction, the Republicans are saying, 
well, we've either got to privatize Social Security, got to increase 
the retirement age, or we've got to reduce the already inadequate COLA 
that seniors get. Let's chain the CPI. That's their refrain: we must 
cut entitlements. Well, guess what, Social Security has never 
contributed one penny to the deficit or the debt of the United States 
of America. It is a program which pays for itself.
  So why this single-minded focus on cutting Social Security? Yeah, it 
does have a projected problem of about 23 percent to pay full benefits 
starting in 2036. So, yeah, there's a long-term problem; but, actually, 
that's quite easily fixed. All we have to do is close the tax loophole. 
And maybe we agree there.
  Here's a loophole I'd like to close: Why does a millionaire pay one-
tenth the rate of taxes to Social Security of a cop on the beat, or a 
soldier in the field, or a teacher in the classroom? I don't know. 
That's what the law says. Well, how about we lift the cap and have the 
millionaires and billionaires pay the same percent of their income to 
Social Security as cops and teachers and soldiers in the military. 
Seems fair to me. There's a loophole we could close. And that would 
give Social Security assets adequate to pay 100 percent of benefits for 
at least 75 years into the future, as far as the actuaries will 
guarantee. So there's a loophole we can agree on closing, hopefully.
  But they are going to have to give up on this lame argument that 
somehow making millionaires and billionaires pay taxes at the rate of 
the Clinton era, when we had record low unemployment, will hurt our 
economy.

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