Date: 1983-06-23
Speaker: VANDER JAGT (republican)
Chamber: H

Mr. Chairman. I would like to commend and thank the distinguished Speaker . of the House of Representatives for bringing to the floor of the House this legislation which has so completely united the minority this afternoon. When the voters realize what indeed is in it. that it will provide a big majority of middle income taxpaying. Americans with tax increases. they will react with righteous indignation against the unfairness. they inequity. the injustice that reeks from every page of this misdirected. misguided. and mislabeled permanent tax increase on the backs of the American people. If we had a truthinpackaging parliamentary rule this bill would be ruled out of order. The bill claims to put a onetime cap on the third year of the tax cut. It does not. It is a permanent tax increase. The bill claims to hit at the very rich. It does not. It hits at the middle income working couples all across this land. The bill aims at those earning over $50.000 a year. it does not hit them. Millions of those who are affected earn far less than that. And even if the bill were as advertised. it would be the worst possible economic medicine at the worst possible time. These are precisely the dollars that we need for the investment and the Watkins Waxman Weber Weiss Wheat Whitehurst Whitley Whittaker Whitten Williams (MT) Williams (OH) Wilson Win Wirth Wise Wolf Wolpe Wortley Wright Wyden Wylie Yates Yatron Young (FL) Young (MO) Zablocki Zschau savings and the big ticket consumer purchases to fuel an expanding economy. to provide growth and jobs. We have a terrific jobs program going in America today. one of the best we have ever had. it added 376.000 additional jobs to the workforce just last month. That jobs program is called economic recovery. And now is no time to snuff out the blooming of that economic recovery. But some are so enamored by the political attractiveness of the proposal that they are blinded to its economic consequences. And I suppose there is a political attractiveness if the people stop at the headlines and do not really realize what indeed is in the bill because the bill can be paraded as "There goes President Reagan and those Republicans trying to defend the very rich. while we Democrats are sallying forth to sock it to the very rich." There is one thing wrong with that. .There is one thing very wrong with that. The heart of the bill misses the very rich all together. For anybody who has read the bill. there is no $700 cap. no $700 limitation written in here. The drafters of the legislation tried to achieve that result by raising the tax rates. There is one problem: The very rich are already in the top bracket of 50 percent. you cannot push them any higher than they already are and this bill does not do it. They might as well walk off scot free. Now. I think the proponents were sincere when they aimed at those earning over $50.000. but 48 percent of those they actually hit were earning under $50.000. That is how bad the aim actually Is. That family that is earning $35.200 has their marginal tax rate increased by 30 percent. the highest jump in the entire Internal Revenue Code. Now. I believe that a family with a husband earning $18.000. a spouse who goes out to earn an additional $17.200. in order to pay college tuition and make mortgage payments. is not going to take too kindly to a Congressman who with his vote this afternoon goes to that family and says. "Sorry. you are too rich. you do not deserve to keep the desperately needed tax relief and we are going to snatch it away from you 8 days before it is scheduled to go into effect." I do not think that family is going to think that it is fair when a Congressman with his vote this afternoon says to that family. "Sorry. you are too rich. but any extra dollars that you earn. your tax rate goes up 30 percent. but for any extra dollars earned by the family earning over $162.000 a year. we do not raise the rate at all." That is not equity. that is not justice. If you really believe in fairness and equity this bill cries out for a loud "No" vote. This legislation is a blueprint not only for economic disaster. this legislation is a blueprint for the political disaster that would be so richly deserved by those who would foist an unfair. permanent tax increase on people who cannot afford to pay it at exactly the wrong time.