TAXING AND SPENDING -- (House of Representatives - October 20, 2005)
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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