Don't Cut Taxes For Millionaires

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. YARMUTH. Mr. Speaker, our Republican colleagues are constantly reminding us that the administration last year said that unemployment would not get to 8 percent if we passed our Recovery Act. Well, that remains to be seen. But let's talk about a projection that they made some years ago that they don't want to talk about, and

that's that we were going to have endless surpluses. They used that prediction of endless surpluses to justify cutting taxes for the wealthiest people in the United States.

Well, those people had a great decade. On average, $100,000 savings on taxes during that time. Did they create more jobs because they cut their taxes? No. In fact, we had actually the most stagnant period of private sector job growth in modern history.

So now, when we don't have an endless surplus, in fact, a very large deficit, and we need job creation, they say, Oh, let's cut their taxes again. It wasn't good enough that the average millionaire had his or her net worth increased by 16 percent in 2009 while every other American stagnated. No. They want to make it a little bit better for the wealthiest people in America.

We want to cut taxes for middle class America and not millionaires.

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