Conference Report on H.R. 1308, Working Families Tax Relief Act of 2004

CONFERENCE REPORT ON H.R. 1308, WORKING FAMILIES TAX RELIEF ACT OF 2004 -- (House of Representatives - September 23, 2004)

Mr. REYNOLDS. Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 794 and ask for its immediate consideration.

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Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

The chairman of the committee is correct, this is timely. It is on the eve of an election. So, therefore, Republicans believe that all tax cuts should be held back, especially the child credit, until election time. And I assume that they believe that we will not notice that they are running us deeper and deeper and deeper into deficit. But since they have no awareness or do not care about it, then once again we have a political issue that is brought to us on the floor.

How long has it been since the Republicans were talking about a balanced budget amendment? How long has it been since it was supposed to be Democrats who just tax and spend, but they were the ones who were concerned about the future of our children and our children's children?

So now they have brought a very popular bill that they are not going to get much problem from the Democrats in terms as to whether or not the middle income this time should enjoy some of the benefits that in the past they just lavished on the very wealthy. And so if we are going to extend the tax credits for children, a child tax credit, if we are going to make certain that we give some relief for married couples, if we expand the 10 percent tax bracket, who would contest these types of things?

It is true that in the conference there did not appear to be that much concern about working parents that were at the poverty line. As most of the Members know, the present legislation index, the threshold at $10,000, because of inflation it is now up to $10,750. As a result of that, some 4 million working people will be denied the tax credit, which comes to over 9 million children would be denied.

In the conference when the question was raised, why can you not make provisions to take care of the children of those people that work every day and live in an inflationary society and not have them cut off, the prevailing view was this was a tax bill and not a welfare bill.

Then we had some controversy where we were able to get the majority to adjust to make certain that those young people that were fighting in combat and not having to pay taxes on their combat pay, that adjustments would be made that they still could be eligible for the Earned Income Tax Credit. But somehow they only thought that they could do it for 2 years.

The President says he does not even know whether we can win the war, and then the majority said that they would be glad to do it, except that the Internal Revenue Service would have difficulty because it is so complex. Then some Members said it was abuse. Having said that, I do not think you have to be a rocket genius to figure out how many poor infantrymen we have in Iraq and how many of them have children and how many of them are poor and how many of them we should say, hey, you are fighting for this country, and we got to give you the same benefits as we give anyone else.

So the reason given that we would not make this benefit permanent was because it was too complicated for the Internal Revenue Service to handle and we would like to see how this works.

Well, these are the poison pills that are put into a piece of legislation, that the majority is just hoping that they will be able to say that Democrats voted against the provisions to provide tax benefits for the middle class.

But one day someone is going to have to answer to these young people and their kids. One day history is going to ask us, where were we when this deficit was mounting? Where were we when we turned the moneys that we are borrowing over to the Chinese and the Japanese? Where were we when the interest on the debt exceeded that of discretionary spending? Where were those responsible Republicans when they decided to do the political thing, rather than the right thing?

Well, I, for one, am just as political as they are, and even though they did not pay for this bill, they are saying there were savings, there were loopholes, there were things they could have done. But because they are so anxious to get the jobs bill, this is the newly-labeled jobs bill, you know, this was the bill that it turned out that the World Trade Organization said we had about $4 billion liability, so they waited for years to get us deeper and deeper in trouble, for tariffs to be against our exporters, and then say why not do what we always wanted to do, reduce taxes for corporations?

Some of us, the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Crane) and I, thought that was a great idea. How little did we know on that bill they only meant corporations that were moving their jobs overseas. But that is another bill for another day, and that is a political issue.

But here we are again, and I hope no one has to say that I voted yes and I voted no on this one, because they are driving the deficit, and we do not think that the people who deserve a tax benefit should pay the penalty, when deficits mean nothing for the $1.4 trillion tax cut they gave to the very wealthy.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Speaker, with great pleasure, I yield 2 ½ minutes to the distinguished gentleman from California (Mr. Stark), an outstanding member of the Committee on Ways and Means.

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Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Let me make it clear and try to set the direction in which this debate is going. We do not find Democrats disputing the merits of the tax cuts. We are not even challenging the fact that Republicans have decided to do this on the eve of the election. All we are saying is that you could have given our combat people a better deal by making their extension permanent, and you certainly could have given the working poor an opportunity to enjoy this even though they make $10,750.

The problem we have with this is the fact that you are running us $149 billion back into the deficit when you know, and it will go unchallenged, that in the committee, in the conference, we did have the loopholes to repair this and to bring to this floor a bill that would have been paid for, that would have passed with all Democrats and all Republican votes.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Cardin), a Member whose career has been spent trying to protect all Americans, especially those who are struggling to become part of the mainstream.

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