Date: 2008-05-21
Speaker: LINCOLN DIAZ-BALART (republican)
Chamber: H
State: Florida

Mr. Speaker. there are only two ways to balance the budget: You can either spend less or you can increase the amount of money coming in. The majority. as reflected in their budget. have rejected the first option and instead have chosen higher spending. higher taxes. and a bigger Federal Government. Republicans have chosen a more responsible approach by committing to spending less and letting workers. families. and small businesses keep more of their hardearned income to save. invest. and spend as they see fit. While Republicans have faith in the ability of workers and families to decide how best to use their paychecks. the majority budget reflects the majoritys belief that the Federal Government can make better choices at spending money than individual Americans. That is a fundamental difference between Democrats and Republicans. In order for the majority to fund their government spending. their budget raises taxes by twothirds of a trillion dollars over the next 5. years. That is almost $700 billion. I want to repeat that. Mr. Speaker. Twothirds of a trillion dollars. At a time of an economic slowdown and increased cost of living. American families everywhere are tightening their belts and carefully budgeting -their hardearned money. This is not the time for the majority to be forcing American families to send more of their hardearned money to Washington. Instead. we should be passing progrowth policies to help create jobs and economic prosperity. Mr. Speaker. tax increases are not a progrowth policy. They are antigrowth. antismall business. antijob creation.. and we should reject them. No* you can call this a tax increase or you can call it letting tax cuts expire. but the reality is that under the majoritys budget. every American will pay more of their paycheck to the Federal Government. That includes many middle class families. small business owners. and entrepreneurs. Although Democrats try to claim otherwise. the numbers in their own budget document show that taxes will increase nearly three times more than when the largest enacted tax hike to date was passed. making this the largest tax increase in American history. While the majority claims their budget will protect middle class families. their budget numbers tell a different story. Under the massive tax increases in the majoritys budget. the average taxpayer in the State of Florida. for example. will see his or her annual bill increase by over $3.000. The majoritys budget lets the current tax cuts expire. and some of those tax cuts are very important to Americans. to our economy. For example. seniors could see taxes on their investments and savings income double. Fortyeight million married couples could once again face a marriage tax penalty. costing them $3.000 per year. Younig families could see a reduction in the child tax credit. States such as Florida may not get an extension of the State sales tax deduction. The majoritys budget may even manage to resurrect the death tax. This will particularly hurt the small businesses in the district that Im honored to represent. which provide the majority of the communitys jobs. It may even hit 26 million additional middle class taxpayers with the alternative minimum tax. Their budget also assumes that 6 million Americans who currently do not pay any taxes. will once again have to pay taxes. Mr. Speaker. in order to boost our economy. increase investment in .the United States. create jobs. Congress should not be raising taxes by the largest amount in history.At this time. I reserve the balance of my time.