Providing for Consideration of Senate Amendment to H.J. Res. 66, Permanent Tax Relief for Families and Small Businesses Act of 2012, and Providing for Consideration of H.R. 6684, Spending Reduction Act of 2012
Floor Speech
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Mr. McCLINTOCK. I thank my friend for yielding.
Mr. Speaker, the debate over the fiscal cliff has become so hyperbolic that I'm afraid we're losing touch with common sense.
Contrary to many press accounts and many statements by Members, there is no bill before the Congress that proposes raising taxes on millionaires or anybody else. There is a law that takes effect on January 1 that will raise taxes on millionaires and small businesses filing as millionaires and on everybody else, and there is a bill to protect everybody else from that law, which is the issue before us today.
The President says he wants to protect everybody except those greedy millionaires and billionaires. Well, that's precisely what this bill does, and yet he has vowed to veto it. The truth is he wants to sock everybody who is making over $200,000. Now, that includes 1.3 million small businesses filing under subchapter S. That's 84 percent of net small business income. That is precisely the income that they use to produce two-thirds of the jobs in our economy.
The Congressional Budget Office warns us that Mr. Obama's ``eat the rich'' crusade will actually result in throwing 200,000 middle class families into unemployment. Ernst & Young estimates 700,000 lost jobs.
House Republicans now have a choice in that we can try to save as many Americans from these ruinous tax increases as the President will permit or we can end up at an impasse that assures taxes go up on everyone. So let us pass this bill. If it doesn't work, then let's pass it at whatever level the President will agree to. It's not as if we haven't repeatedly warned him.
Some of my conservative colleagues say that sparing some people these tax increases is tantamount to raising them on others. For a lifeguard who sees 10 swimmers drowning off his beach, if he can only save nine of them, that doesn't mean he has drowned the 10th one. And no lifeguard would be worth his pay if he said, Well, my principle is that nobody should drown off my beach; therefore, as a matter of principle, if I can't save them all, then I won't save any.
As Americans watch as thousands and thousands of middle class jobs are sacrificed on the ideological altar of Obamanomics next year, I think this country will be a lot sadder and a lot wiser, but until then, let's save who we can.
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