TAX BURDEN IN AMERICA -- (House of Representatives - November 08, 2007)
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Mr. GARRETT of New Jersey. I appreciate that and thank the gentleman from Texas for your work on this issue.
I also commend the gentleman from Pennsylvania because I know he has been championing this issue and cause for a number of years. And I believe during his remarks he mentioned the piece of legislation he has had in this House for some time as well.
In his usual, understated way, the gentleman from Pennsylvania ended his remarks by saying this will begin a philosophical discussion, and the gentleman from Texas picked up on that as well. Indeed it is a great philosophical discussion to point out the disparity between the two parties. The Democrat Party, which is now in control of the House and the Senate, we can see from their actions during the past 11 months that they have been in control that families should be compelled to keep their house in order but Congress does not have to be forced to live within its means. They do that every time they come to the floor with another tax increase, which we will see shortly when their AMT bill comes, that Congress does not have to live within their means. The focus should be, instead, on the family budget, as we have always said on this floor in the past.
Before I came to the floor, I want to do a little aside, I was reading this current issue of Human Events, the week of November 5. It is a front-page story by Andrew Boylan: ``Rangel tax reform riddled with tax hikes.'' He has an expression in here, and I think it points out what Charlie Rangel and the Democrat majority are trying to do in the House. It says, ``Chairman Rangel's plan isn't just robbing Peter to pay Paul; it is robbing Peter and Paul while convincing both of them that the other guy is the one paying the higher taxes.'' That really puts it in a nutshell.
What you will hear from the other side of the aisle when they begin to explain this is no, we are just trying to set things straight. We are just trying to rectify a problem from the old AMT. But at the same time they really, in reality, are shifting it. No, they are robbing from all of us, the entire American population, and they will be trying to convince all of us through the spin and the rhetoric that we hear that the other guy is paying it. That is not the case at all.
You know, the word ``AMT,'' for those who don't follow this issue very closely, has a good name, alternative minimum tax. At first blush that sounds like something that you would want to pay instead of what you are currently paying.
``Alternative'' makes it sound like it is voluntary. ``Minimum''; I, too, would like to pay the minimum amount of taxes. But those words are deceiving just as the Democrat plan is deceiving. It is not alternative in the sense that it is voluntary. It is mandatory. You are compelled to pay the higher of the tax. And it is not minimum in any sense of the word. It is a maximum tax. That will be exactly what we get when the Democrats give us Charlie Rangel's bill of an alternative minimum tax fix.
Now the gentleman from Pennsylvania talked about a piece of legislation that he has worked on, which I have cosponsored as well, that tries to address this by simply repealing the entire AMT. It repeals the entire alternative minimum tax so that citizens of this country will not have to pay that higher tax.
I've cosponsored that legislation, and I support it, but let me just digress for 30 seconds here and just say that I also have sponsored a piece of legislation to address the AMT in this session of Congress. It does not go so far as to totally repeal the bill, but what it does is to try to do, let's say, a compromise measure, if you will, if we can't get that far because the other side of the aisle will not go so far as to giving American taxpayers that total relief. And what it does is it meets it halfway.
From my perspective, it gets halfway and says let's put a COLA in that bill, a cost of living adjustment into it, so that the AMT could do what it was actually intended to do several decades ago, target those very, very, very, very few. Back then, there were was only 150 of those taxpayers out of 200 million people, those taxpayers who were not paying any taxes, and put a COLA into it so that it would be just adjusted just as the rest of the tax breaks. So when your income goes up each year due to inflation and what have you, you would not find yourself falling into it.
So if the Democrats can't go so far as some of us, as Congressman English and others of us believe that we would like to see here, and that is to totally repeal, take away that burden on all American taxpayers, I would hope that they would see instead some sense to reaching halfway at the very least and saying let's make sure that it does not swallow up so many of the individuals in this country. If we don't do anything shortly, 22 million Americans will see their taxes go up dramatically.
Now, I come to the floor, as the gentleman from Texas says, from the great State of New Jersey, and I speak with some experience as to the fact that sometimes the other side of the aisle, both on a Federal level and on a State level, will try to deceive us on some of these things as to who they're really going after.
Here, if you read and listen to the rhetoric from the Democrats on this issue, they're saying, well, we're just trying to go after the rich people in this country. In New Jersey, a few years ago, there was Governor McGreevey at the time. They said the same thing. They said we're going to go with a millionaire's tax, and of course, the average citizen said, hey, that's fine, they're not coming after me; they're going after the other guy; in effect robbing Peter to pay Paul and convince them it's the other taxpayer that's going to pay the bill.
But you know what happened there. That millionaire's tax in New Jersey started at $1 million, and then suddenly it went down to $900,000, then $800,000, $700,000, and it kept on going down lower and lower and lower until eventually it covered just about everybody. Anybody who had a household where the husband and wife worked, you had a husband maybe a policeman and the wife might be a school teacher or a nurse or something like that, they became covered by that so-called millionaire tax in New Jersey.
It was the so-called tax that started out as a rifle shot at just a select few and instead turned into a shotgun approach and encompassed everyone. Same thing that's happening right here with the AMT so-called relief that we're getting from the Democrats, so-called going after the millionaires; but it's going to cover all of us with higher taxes.
When I say higher taxes, one of the things I say on the floor just about every time I come to the floor, I say this. We are now in November, the eleventh month of the year, which means we're on the eleventh of Democrat control of this House, and we should always ask ourselves, what has 11 months of control by the Democrats wrought for this House and the country.
It has initially brought us the largest tax increase in U.S. history. It has brought us the creation of slush funds in the various appropriation and budget bills that they gave us at the beginning of the year, and it has gotten rid of any hint of transparency in the earmark rules of this House, some things that they campaigned on.
The issue of tax increases continues here tonight, and if I have just another minute, they gave us the largest tax increase initially when they gave us the budget at the very beginning of the year. Since that time, in just about every piece of major legislation that the Democrats have brought before this House, you have seen a tax increase. In bills that you would never even imagine would have tax increases, they have it. And let me just take a moment just to run through a list, and I don't have a chart to put up behind me so I'll have to give it to you this way.
The CLEAN Energy Act, we're all in favor of clean energy, I suppose, but it includes a $7.7 billion tax increase over 10 years. The Small Business and Work Opportunity Tax Act, $1.38 billion. Katrina Housing Tax Relief, tax relief, it sounds as though they're giving us tax relief. No, it's raising taxes by $241 million. Taxpayer Protection Act, $23 million increase. To amend the Internal Revenue Code, well, we all want to do that, but who knows. When they did it, they raised taxes by $14 million.
U.S. Troop Readiness, Veterans' Care, Katrina Recovery and Iraq Accountability Appropriations Act. Gosh, by the name of that, they're all great things, U.S. troop readiness, Katrina recovery, but you know what, they tucked in a tax increase there. How much? $4.4 billion. Second bill, same name, H.R. 2206, $4.8 billion.
The Andean Trade Preferences Act, $105 million tax increase. Farm Nutrition and Bioenergy Act, $7.4 billion Democrat tax increase. The Children's Health and Medicare Protection Act, get this one, $54.8 billion Democrat tax increase.
Just three more. The Renewable Energy and Energy Conservation Act, what does that have to do with taxes? Well, for the Democrats, it's $15 billion in tax increases.
The Airport and Airway Trust Fund Financing Act, trying to make our airports better. Well, how do they do it? They do it by raising our taxes by $1.8 billion.
And, finally, the Mortgage Forgiveness Debt Relief Act. Who could be against mortgage forgiveness and debt relief? Well, the debt is going to be on our shoulders because they're raising taxes by $2.005 billion.
You add up that whole list, and this is even before we come to the bill that's before us tomorrow, that comes to $106 billion tax increase over 10 years, on top of the largest tax increase as I mentioned in the budget at the beginning of the year.
Let me just conclude. I see our time is coming down. These numbers are for me, and I think most Americans, hard to put your arms around when you are talking about such high tax increases. The bottom line, though, is put them in large absolute numbers when you're talking about $106 billion or the $70 billion in permanent tax increases as the gentleman talked about, or as a Member from the other side of the aisle admitted, 130 percent tax increase, whether it's percentages or absolute numbers, put them down in day-to-day numbers. It's around $2,400 on the largest tax increase to the average American household that you will be seeing.
The question we have to ask is the one I started with and the one that the gentleman from Pennsylvania ended with. It's a philosophical discussion. Are we going to put the focus on the American budget or the family budget? I suggest, and this side of the aisle suggests, the focus should be on the American family's budget to allow the American taxpayer to keep as much of his money as possible and not see another tax increase on that family budget.
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