Regarding H.C. Res. 312

“More tax cuts for the wealthy while the poor freeze to death on the streets of our Nation’s Capital”

Mr. Speaker, as we mark President Reagan’s birthday today, it is fitting to remember one of his most famous lines: “There you go again.”

Well, tragically, here we go again.

In the early 1980s, President Reagan forced through massive tax cuts and military spending hikes that resulted in record budget deficits for over 12 years, weakened the Social Security and Medicare trust funds, caused deep and painful spending cuts that affected workers, families with children, and the poor.

Sound familiar today? Look at President Bush’s budget priorities.

Whether or not you believe that tax cuts are good policy, you cannot agree that despite the recession, the September 11 attacks, and the unmet needs of America that these tax cuts for the rich are still the right thing to do right now.

Everyone agrees that "the world changed" since September 11. The President’s “war budget” suggests as much. Apparently everything has changed except for these tax cuts.

While the President has failed to embrace the new reality, the governors have. Across the country they are scaling back or postponing tax cuts they had planned. Even four Republican governors are postponing tax cuts. Are these Republican governors raising taxes? Clearly they are not. They are being fiscally responsible.

Americans watching this morning should ask themselves whether they believe that our Nation is adequately addressing the issues about which they care most.

Do you believe we are doing a good enough job on protecting Social Security, ensuring health insurance for families, extending unemployment insurance for workers affected by 9/11 and the recession, modernizing our schools or paying teachers a high enough salary?

I think most Americans would argue we are not doing a good enough job on those critical issues.

The massive tax cut that President Bush pushed through Congress last year has eaten away 41 percent of the long-term record budget surplus that this Nation worked so hard to create in the 1990s.

The historic surplus -- gone! Gone in an irresponsible instant.

Meanwhile, six homeless Americans froze to death last night on the streets of Washington.

Here we go again.

You know, this resolution today is really very disappointing.

It clearly illustrates the failed leadership of the Republican majority.

You see, the Republican leadership wants to play a game. The game is called “gotcha.”

They think they are being cute. They bring up this resolution, hoping their opponents will vote against it. And then, “Gotcha,” they say.

The problem is, the stakes are too high to be playing a game.

The American people are not playing a game.

I am not playing a game.

And my Democratic colleagues are not playing a game.

The tax cuts approved last year and proposed by the President again this year threaten Social Security.

That is not cute. That is dangerous.

The tax cuts approved last year and proposed by the President this year threaten Medicare.

The tax cuts approved last year and proposed this year by the President threaten to break the President Bush’s own promise to reform our public schools.

You know, Americans are willing to make sacrifices to protect America, to erase deficits, or to help one another in a time of need.

But these tax cuts that are eating up America’s nest egg shower billions of dollars onto the Republicans party’s richest contributors. For this hard working Americans should be asked to sacrifice? What is the value we are protecting by asking Americans to sacrifice so the rich can get richer?

Let us remember that President Reagan’s budget director, David Stockman ultimately admitted that Reagan’s tax cuts were fated to create massive deficits to justify deep domestic spending cutbacks. The new director of the Congressional Budget Office is warning that we face the prospects of deep deficits, tax increases and spending cuts. In fact, President Bush’s call for to make his tax cuts for the rich permanent will cost an additional $300 billion, further jeopardizing Social Security and Medicare.

Americans do not need “gotcha” politics in Washington. They need us to protect Social Security, protect Medicare, strengthen the economy and improve our schools.

As people freeze to death on the streets of Washington, the President Bush and his Republican leaders are pushing for more tax cuts for the wealthy.

Iceberg? What iceberg?

Mr. Speaker, I ask to have included in the Record the following editorial from the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times concerning President Bush’s budget and his call to continue his irresponsible tax cuts.

The Washington Post said that "...the administration's plea for austerity turns hollow when it is willing to whack an array of domestic programs, including many that serve the neediest citizens, but not touch the tax cuts it won last year, which disproportionately benefit the better-off and consume revenue necessary to meet future domestic and foreign challenges."

See attachments...

EDITORIAL

The Washington Post

February 4, 2002

The War Budget

FOR THE PAST couple of weeks, various pieces of the president's budget plan have been released, mostly highlighting areas in which the administration will take credit for investing in popular programs. Mr. Bush, for example, will propose restoring food stamp eligibility for some legal immigrants who had been denied benefits, and will offer an increase in special education spending. On a vastly larger scale he wants to devote some $38 billion to homeland security and provide for a historic $48 billion increase in defense spending. Much less detail has emerged on the flip side of the equation: the expected squeeze on a broad array of programs to make room for the president's wartime priorities. Mr. Bush continues to suggest that it's possible to increase spending, address the deficits that lie ahead in Social Security and expand tax cuts. That math didn't work last year; it's more dubious now, because the huge surpluses that were supposed to fund both the tax cut and other needs have dwindled.

With defense and homeland security as his top priorities, Mr. Bush will propose austerity for other domestic programs, holding overall growth to about 2 percent. That's everything from highways to parks to Head Start. It's a tight cap, and the squeeze will grow in years to come. On yesterday's op-ed page, Office of Management and Budget director Mitchell Daniels argued that the president deserves credit for not slashing more in discretionary spending. Compared with cuts by presidents Roosevelt and Truman during World War II and the Korean War, Mr. Bush's approach is moderate, he said. Now, Mr. Daniels maintains, Congress must resist pressure from special interests and lawmakers' own ambitions for pet projects so spending can be kept "within reason" while the administration pursues its war aims.

Certainly the country can't afford both the guns the administration says it needs and all the butter Congress may want. It's also true that some government programs can be axed, that there are too many unneeded, porky projects, and that the attacks of Sept. 11 have dramatically rearranged the nation's priorities. But the administration's plea for austerity turns hollow when it is willing to whack an array of domestic programs, including many that serve the neediest citizens, but not touch the tax cuts it won last year, which disproportionately benefit the better-off and consume revenue necessary to meet future domestic and foreign challenges.

Since the tax cuts were enacted, the surpluses that were supposed to allow the government to forgo $1.3 trillion in tax revenue have been dramatically reduced. The tax cuts and their associated debt-service costs account for roughly 40 percent of the $4 trillion lost from the projected surplus. If the cuts are made permanent, as Mr. Bush proposes, they will bite into federal revenues more voraciously. An administration committed to a long-term battle against terror -- "This campaign may not be finished on our watch," the president said in the State of the Union address -- should be looking hard at the long-term fiscal picture as well. Rather than lock in costly tax cuts, both Mr. Bush and Congress should remember lessons of the past, face up to the current emergency and, for the sake of the nation's military strength and fiscal health, set that narrow political cause aside.

EDITORIAL

The Los Angeles Times

Bush's Magic Budget

February 6, 2002

With its glossy book format and American flag on the cover, President Bush's $2.1-trillion budget proposal couldn't be better packaged. But its looks aren't fooling anyone who can add. A national poll in Tuesday's Times has a very clear message for Bush: A wide majority of Americans, including two-thirds of Republicans, say they support delaying tax cuts rather than tapping Social Security funds to pay for Bush's extravaganza.

No one questions the need to run a deficit during a recession and war. But excess spending should be targeted, productive and temporary. The Bush plan, requesting $590 billion in additional tax cuts and $550 billion in new military spending over the next decade, is none of these. Some of the heavy weaponry, such as the Crusader howitzer, that the administration wants makes no sense for fighting terrorism. Nor does speeding up tax cuts or piling on personal and corporate write-offs.

The administration's proposals for cutting spending are mean-spirited: reducing environmental and job training programs as well as more cuttable highway funds. Worst, however, are the gimmicks that conceal the truth. The White House knows very well that Congress, in an election year and painful recession, is likely to restore funds for job training and other programs. A series of Enron-like accounting devices and overly optimistic revenue assumptions also conceal the extent of the damage.

Consider: The White House wishes away what the congressional Joint Tax Committee estimates will be several hundred billion dollars in lost revenue over the decade by wrongly assuming that Congress will not continue protecting middle-class taxpayers from having to pay the alternative minimum tax, which was meant to nail tax-sheltering millionaires. Without action, the middle-class exemption would expire in 2004.

The administration also uses the trick of phasing in tax cuts slowly so that the full bill doesn't come due until the end of the decade, long after Bush is gone. Its estimate of Medicare costs is $300 billion less than the Congressional Budget Office's. Flying in the face of economic reality, it predicts that costs for homeland security, education and veterans' programs will decline after 2003. Above all, the administration totally ignores the costs of its permanent tax cuts in the decade from 2012 to 2022--trillions more will be lost at the very moment the baby boom generation is retiring.

Bush is using the war on terrorism and his still-stratospheric approval ratings to browbeat Congress, but Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota and other leading Democrats have an obligation. They should not only point out the dangers in Bush's budget plan but act: Delay tax cuts, closely inspect military spending and protect Medicare and Social Security. With the support of three-quarters of Americans, they need not surrender to the president's reckless economic policies wrapped in anti-terrorism.