Prescription Drug and Medicare Improvement Act of 2003

PRESCRIPTION DRUG AND MEDICARE IMPROVEMENT ACT OF 2003

CHILD CARE TAX CREDIT

Mrs. LINCOLN. Madam President, I am rising today to encourage my colleagues. I have gotten an understanding that the Republican leadership will be meeting in the morning to talk about the conference with the House on the opportunity we have to provide 12 million children in this country some help through the tax relief package that was passed in the Senate.

I also thank my Senate colleagues for, in a resounding way, reaching out to this country and to those 12 million children, as well as their working families, and saying we do believe it is important that the tax relief package we provide be balanced both in its fiscal responsibility and in its ability to reach out to all working families in this Nation and give them the relief so that they, too, will have the opportunity to be able to participate in stimulating the economy of the country. After all, that is what we are really looking for, stimulating the economy and making sure we are strengthening our Nation. I think there is no better place to go than to the working American families.

So I encourage my colleagues today, as I come to the floor not to ask immediately but to request of the leadership, to really thoughtfully put together what it is we need to do in order to expedite moving to conference on this issue. I also plead with the President that his efforts and opportunities will certainly weigh in with the Members of the House, encouraging them to move forward. They have already voted in the House in a motion to instruct the conferees to the Senate position. This is something we can do, and do it quickly and in a very fiscally responsible manner by paying for it. But we can do something now that is going to help working families in the next several months.

It is critical, as we move forward with the previous tax package passed, to provide relief to all Americans across this great land by July 1, and that we, too, recognize not only those precious 12 million children who are out there, but the working families they are a part of, recognizing that these families are preparing in the late summer to get their children ready to go back to school. They certainly could use those resources in multitudes of ways—bringing their families together, preparing their children for the school year. We desperately want to make sure that happens.

I encourage our Republican leadership to come together to visit on moving forward in the conference, recognizing that we have a tremendous responsibility not only to the economy of this Nation, particularly in strengthening our country, but, more importantly, to the future of the country.

When you look at those who will be the future leaders of the workforce, the individuals who will be there to continue the great legacy of this land—the children of our country—we must give those working families the opportunity to take advantage of the same kind of tax relief that other families are going to be getting; they, too, have to take that opportunity to reinvest in this great country and, more importantly, in their families and their children.

So I encourage my colleagues, as well as the leadership on the other side, to make sure that in the morning they will meet in a wholehearted fashion looking for the opportunity we have before us to be fair and balanced for the multitudes of children and working families across this country.

I, too, encourage the President to weigh in on this issue. He has a tremendous opportunity to make a difference, and I hope he will choose to do so.

I yield the floor and suggest the absence of a quorum.