Conference Report on H.R. 4297, Tax Increase Prevention and Reconciliation Act of 2005
CONFERENCE REPORT ON H.R. 4297, TAX INCREASE PREVENTION AND RECONCILIATION ACT OF 2005 -- (House of Representatives - May 10, 2006)
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Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, the gentleman said the Wall Street Journal says we are doing well. The Main Street Journal says people are going into bankruptcy. They are losing their pensions; they are losing their health insurance. It depends on what paper you read.
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Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
I do not know what kind of water they drink on the other side of the aisle, but back where I come from, you get a check that tells you how much you have earned and how much is deducted, and what is deducted is a tax and what you take home is net. So you can call it payroll, you can call it income tax, but a tax is a tax is a tax.
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Ms. GINNY BROWN-WAITE of Florida. Mr. Chairman, the deduction of State and local sales taxes is extremely important to my constituents and those in States that do not have an income tax.
Do you expect to present a bill to extend this crucial deduction soon?
Mr. THOMAS. I will tell my colleague that in my opening remarks I indicated that there were provisions that passed both the House and the Senate in the reconciliation packages that are not part of this bill. We are working currently on this next bill. Clearly, the State and local tax deduction will be a part of it, and we will move it to the floor as soon as possible.
Mr. RANGEL. Yeah, that next bill will probably be $100 billion.
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Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.
Mr. Speaker, for those who say that we will not have an opportunity to vote for a fair alternative minimum tax, I would like to share with you that on the motion to recommit that we give instructions that we will have an opportunity to do that. Why are the Republicans so excited about enacting the cuts and interest rates and capital gains taxes for something that does not expire when 17 million, 18 million people need help? I don't know, but they want to give this $50 billion tax cut to people who are not screaming for it.
Where are they going to get the money? They are going to borrow the money in order to give the tax cuts, so that on our motion to recommit we set aside these tax cuts for the rich and concentrate on the middle class. This is really where your vote should be counted. Do you want to deal where 50 percent of this tax cut is going to the top 1 percent of the country, or are you really concerned with the alternative minimum tax that we Democrats have been advocating for the last few years that these people were not supposed to be caught up in this, and so we don't want them caught up in this. We don't pay for it, we borrow money to do it. It is paid for.
It just seems to me that as we talk about the economy booming, that as we go home, I hope we talk with the people that worked in the factory. The increase that we have had in job creation, 50 percent of it has been an expansion in government jobs. I am certain that this is not what the other side is so proud of. But as you walk the street and ask the people that work every day that are concerned about their pensions, concerned about their health care, the Delta pilots on strike, our automobile industry in jeopardy, why don't you ask these people about this great economic boom that you are talking about, and now you got to promise them more.
I am glad that we have come to this time in this session that we can distinguish between Republicans and Democrats and we can see the difference between us. I think what you are saying if you give these enormous tax cuts to the richest people, sooner or later it will leak down to the people who are working on the jobs.
I can understand how some people do not believe that a Medicare tax or that a Social Security tax is a tax. You may call it a fish, you may call it a fishing pole. But when people work every day and they know what their salary really is and they see what they take home, they think what is taken out is a tax.
Maybe in November we will see who is right and who is wrong. Meanwhile, this is an opportunity for America to distinguish do we borrow money for tax cuts and do we cut those people off that are relying on Medicaid and Medicare and reduce their services that we are supposed to give them. I think this is a classic case as we see more and more poor people becoming poor statistically and more of the rich people getting rich and more of the middle class people losing that status, and the people know who they are.
If the old folks really think that they have gotten a fair shake by the other side, well, then, they can be heard. They have an opportunity to be heard. But right now what we are talking about is fairness, we are talking about equity, we are talking about services. Clearly, we are talking about $70 billion or at least $50 billion of that going to the richest people that we have in this country.
The AMT should have been handled separately, and we hope that the motion to recommit will carry, and therefore we would see what honest Americans really believe as to where the relief is going to be.
The biggest fault that we have probably on our side is that we don't rub shoulders with the billionaires and millionaires that you are doing this for. But we do work for the American people. We do know what they want, and I have not received one letter from people asking me to give more relief in that upper income tax bracket. I, for one, refuse to wait for this to leak down and be able to help the middle class people that made this great republic the great country that it is.
People who work hard every day, not just cutting coupons to make this country great, people who volunteer to fight this great war, which we are paying $500 billion a month, these are the people we should be supporting and not the richest of the rich that make no sacrifice at all.
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