The Congressional Record is a unique source of public documentation. It started in 1873, documenting nearly all the major and minor policies being discussed and debated.
“CONFERENCE REPORT ON H.R. 1308, WORKING FAMILIES TAX RELIEF ACT OF 2004” mentioning the U.S. Dept of Labor was published in the House of Representatives section on pages H7514-H7540 on Sept. 23, 2004.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
CONFERENCE REPORT ON H.R. 1308, WORKING FAMILIES TAX RELIEF ACT OF 2004
Mr. REYNOLDS. Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 794 and ask for its immediate consideration.
The Clerk read the resolution, as follows:
H. Res. 794
Resolved, That upon adoption of this resolution it shall be in order to consider the conference report to accompany the bill (H.R. 1308) to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to accelerate the increase in refundability of the child tax credit, and for other purposes. All points of order against the conference report and against its consideration are waived. The conference report shall be considered as read.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from New York (Mr. Reynolds) is recognized for 1 hour.
Mr. REYNOLDS. Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to the gentlewoman from New York (Ms. Slaughter), pending which I yield myself such time as I may consume. During consideration of this resolution, all time yielded is for the purpose of debate only.
(Mr. REYNOLDS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)
Mr. REYNOLDS. Mr. Speaker, House Resolution 794 is a customary rule providing for consideration of the conference report on H.R. 1308, the Working Families Tax Relief Act of 2004. The rule waives all points of order against the conference report and against its consideration. The rule also provides the conference report will be considered as read.
Mr. Speaker, as we prepare to head home to our districts for the weekend, there are two things that I look forward to telling my constituents that this Congress accomplished today: Cutting taxes and creating jobs. They are two of the most important things we can do for the hard-working people who sent us here to represent them.
We all know the unfortunate hits America's economy has suffered over the past several years. But through the strength of this administration and the will of this Congress, we have made great strides in recovering from horrific terrorist attacks, corporate scandals and a recession.
Time and time again, this Congress has responded to adversity with sound economic policies that continue to grow our economy. Thanks to the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Act and the Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Act, we have given taxpayers in my district and all across America greater control over their hard-earned dollars.
Not only does this provide greater motivation for savings and investment, but it also protects and creates jobs. The Working Families Tax Relief Act before us today is yet another step in our plan to create a fair and reasonable tax system for hard-working Americans and continue the path of new job creation.
In March of 2003, this House passed our original version of the bill by a voice vote under suspension of the rules. In June of that same year we passed the bill for a second time.
Mr. Speaker, in the 18 months that we have been debating this bill, our constituents have waited patiently for the tax relief they deserve. Today, that long wait ends.
The underlying conference report includes much of the previous House passed language, providing more and longer lasting benefits for families of all income levels.
It extends the child tax credit of $1,000 per eligible child that is currently scheduled to sunset in 2005. The conference report makes this a meaningful credit available through 2010.
Important tax relief for married couples is also extended in the conference report. The House voted overwhelmingly in April of this year to make marriage penalty relief permanent, and we have yet another opportunity today to do the right thing.
Mr. Speaker, the conference report also expands the 10 percent bracket originally created in the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001, and which overwhelmingly passed this House once again just over 4 months ago. This provision means substantial tax relief for low-income workers by taxing the first $14,000 of earnings for married couples and the first $7,000 for single taxpayers at a 10 percent rate instead of a 15 percent rate.
Without extensions of the child tax credit, marriage penalty relief and the expansion of the 10 percent bracket, working families would face a $109 billion tax increase over the next 10 years. This House simply cannot delay and must pass this measure in order to remove these excess tax burdens from our hard-working families.
Mr. Speaker, the report additionally provides the middle class with relief from the Alternative Minimum Tax, the AMT. While the calculation for the AMT is quite complicated, the negative result is simple to understand: It is an extra tax some have to pay on top of their regular income tax.
Originally conceived to prevent those with a very higher income from abusing tax benefits to unfairly reduce or eliminate their tax liability, the AMT has unintentionally ensnared millions of middle-
class taxpayers. In May of this year, the AMT tax exemption was widely supported in this House on a bipartisan basis. Without this much needed extension, more middle income families will be pushed into the AMT, resulting in a tax hike of $23 billion in the next 10 years.
The conference report also continues to honor our servicemen and women in combat zones with nearly $200 million in tax assistance through the inclusion of tax-free combat pay when calculating their refundable child credit and an increase in the Earned Income Credit.
Our brave men and women in uniform continue to defend the freedoms this Nation holds dear, and every day they work to protect us from those who would do us harm. They do not just deserve our thanks and appreciation, they deserve this sensible assistance for their hard work and sacrifice.
The conference report further provides that the tax-exempt status of an organization is automatically suspended during any period in which the organization is designated as a terrorist organization or is listed in or designated by an executive order as supporting terrorism.
Mr. Speaker, also included in the underlying conference report is a 1-year extension of over 20 various expiring tax provisions, including the research and development tax credit, which is so important to business across the country.
In all, $13 billion of needed tax relief is provided for with these extensions.
Of particular importance to my home State of New York is the expansion of authority to issue advance refunding of Liberty Zone bonds through 2009. The Liberty Zone bond financing was intended to encourage the commercial revitalization of Lower Manhattan, and in particular, the World Trade Center site following the devastating attacks of September 11.
Currently scheduled to expire this December, I am pleased this conference report recognized the importance of the program and has included this much-needed extension.
Mr. Speaker, a yes vote today seizes on the momentum we have created towards a strong economy and job creation and sends a clear message that this Congress supports putting real dollars back where they belong, into the hands of hard-working men and women. A no vote simply prevents us this needed relief from becoming reality and denies our constituency the assistance they deserve.
I urge my colleagues to join me in supporting the rule and the underlying conference report.
Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
(Ms. SLAUGHTER asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks, and include extraneous material.)
Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me time.
Mr. Speaker, I will include for the Record the revenue effects of the bill we are discussing. Up at the top here it says ``very preliminary.'' Given what we went through with the Medicare bill and the fact that we are still now getting revised estimates on what that cost, I thought that was a very interesting thing, and I have not seen that before. So I will put that in the Record.
Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to this rule. It provides the House with only an hour to debate a tax package that was rushed in so fast that we are not sure the ink is dry.
The conference report before us contains many provisions that have broad bipartisan support. Members on both sides of the aisle strongly support the $1,000 per child credit and the new larger 10 percent bracket, and they provide real tax relief for working families. Additionally, the research and development tax credit, work opportunity tax credits and tax incentives for Qualified Zone Academy Bonds all have a great deal of support.
Further, we all probably can agree on the importance of the bill's alternative minimum tax relief provisions. The AMT has increasingly become a major source of headaches for middle-class taxpayers. Last year alone, 3.3 million taxpayers unwittingly found themselves subject to this onerous tax because of the 2001 tax bill. Without further congressional action, the number of Americans who will have to deal with it will grow over 30 million by 2010. While I am pleased that the conference addresses the AMT, it is only a Band-Aid. Providing a permanent remedy to this egregious problem will be costly, but it must be done.
As you can see, Mr. Speaker, there is little fault to find in what the conferees chose to include in their final tax package, except the cost, which, as I said, is very preliminary. I only hope that the conference report for the pork-laden, Christmas-tree-like corporate tax bill that this body passed in June is as reasonable.
That said, the critical question for our Members to ask about this
$150 billion bill is who is going to bear the cost? Our children? Our grandchildren? Both?
The House leadership may not have qualms about putting off questions about the fiscal consequences, but, as a mother and grandmother, I certainly do. We could have paid for it by simply taking back a portion of the recent tax reductions enjoyed by taxpayers who earn over $1 million a year. Unfortunately, the majority refused to consider this approach, choosing instead to push us further into debt by $150 billion.
{time} 1630
I do not understand this tactic. It is irresponsible and indefensible, especially given what the Congressional Budget Office told us 2 short weeks ago. The 2004 deficit will be our largest in history, $422 billion, surpassing last year's record by $47 billion. At this rate, how on earth do we ever stand a chance of bringing the budget back to balance?
We can do better, and we must do better. And I also have no confidence in what we are being told, as I have said, about the cost of the bill. In the past 4 years, my experience has certainly taught me to question the cost estimates that were provided.
Back in 2000, the majority went to great pains to deliver a package that would be scored at $350 billion, and they devised a scheme of phase-ins and phase-outs to arrive at that number. Now, we know the tax cuts have an actual cost of about $620 billion, according to the administration's own office.
In addition to putting the true cost of the tax cut at nearly double the initial estimate, OMB attributed $290 billion of our deficit to the 2001 tax bill, and yet this House refuses to recognize that. Then, let me say again, there is a medicare bill. In June 2003, Congress was told the bill would cost no more than $400 billion over 10 years. Then, we learned about the coercive tactics used to arrive at that magic number and that the actual number of $134 billion more was kept from us.
Today, we understand that there is more to come and that the actual cost now of the medicare bill is $576 billion over 10 years, $176 billion more than we voted on just a few months ago. So keep your eyes open on this one, because if you blink, you may miss millions more added to the price tag.
Mr. Speaker, given the record, how can we trust the cost of this bill?
For all of these reasons and despite my support for middle-class tax cuts, I oppose this rule because we are not allowed to do anything, not only about the extraordinary cost but for the children of our soldiers who are left out of this bill completely and lose their tax credit.
Mr. Speaker, I will insert for the Record at this time the material I referred to earlier.
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] TH23SE04.004
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] TH23SE04.005
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] TH23SE04.006
Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. REYNOLDS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
First, in listening to the gentlewoman's remarks on the general preliminary estimates that were there, as I understand it, that is what is published before the legislation is passed. Also, for the Record, I would like to have the final, which was prepared by the Joint Committee on Taxation, which is on their website for the Members who may not be in the chamber now if they choose to use it, but I would like to have this inserted into the Record as the final numbers.
Also, as I have listened to some of the aspects about this bill, both in the previous rule and now, that it is not paid for, I think there are a couple of things that also need to be on record. This bill prevents a tax increase on families, and it is very clear, if we do nothing, that taxes will go up, and so, actually, we are preventing that. Secondly, the relief that is provided for in the President's budget which holds the line on spending, it cuts the deficit in half over 5 years. The recent data from the Treasury Department show we are on track to meeting the President's budget goals. Finally, the Treasury data shows that tax receipts are increasing, despite the President's tax relief, proof that tax relief leads to economic growth.
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] TH23SE04.007
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] TH23SE04.008
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] TH23SE04.009
Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Pennsylvania
(Ms. Hart).
Ms. HART. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from New York for yielding me this time to speak on this issue. There are so many important tax issues involved in the legislation that this rule would allow that we cannot cover them all in the time allotted, but I think it is important that we address several that are extremely important.
First of all, this administration inherited a recession. Our goal was to bring us out of the recession. A number of these tax cuts and adjustments, tax credits, helped bring our Nation out of a recession. If we allow those tax cuts to be removed, meaning increased taxes, we do not help our economy and certainly will do the opposite and, in fact, will put a number of families in a difficult situation as well as a number of businesses.
I am interested in a number of the provisions that will help our employers, especially the research and development tax credit. In my district, the companies creating new jobs are the ones that have benefited from the R&D tax credit. In fact, one just this week held a job fair to fill 150 new positions. They have benefited significantly from the R&D tax credit. A number of those savings are being used to hire new folks. That is important to us.
Another issue to help employers is the work opportunity tax credit, not only to help employers, but to help those who are involved in getting off welfare. It is a credit for those who hire people who are getting off welfare. That encourages employers to employ those who are getting off welfare. Why would we want that to end?
Also, the expensing of brownfield remediation costs: Throughout the Northeast and the Midwest, we have brownfields that are being redeveloped and the remediation costs are very expensive. Allowing the expensing of some of those remediation costs is encouraging employers again to take over those properties, develop them and create new jobs in communities that desperately need them.
The tax credit for electricity produced from renewable sources, from what I understand, both sides of this aisle are very interested in finding better renewable energy resources. Well, if we remove that tax credit for developing those resources, we are not going to see as much activity. We all know that, if you want less of something, tax it.
What we have done is cut taxes and encouraged growth. We have created tax credits to encourage research and encourage employment. We need to extend the tax cuts, extend the tax credits and make sure we are not, in effect, going to increase taxes on Americans and job creators.
Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 5\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer).
Mr. HOYER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding me this time.
Mr. Speaker, this morning in the Wall Street Journal, former Republican Congressman Joe Scarborough wrote, and this is a conservative, a Republican former member from Florida: ``Ten years ago, Republican congressional candidates like me were running as Washington outsiders, promising to balance the budget and pay off the debt,'' but, Joe Scarborough added, bluntly, ``we lied.''
That is what Joe Scarborough said, referring to ``we'' being Republicans running as outsiders for the Congress of the United States. Joe Scarborough, ``We lied.''
Mr. Speaker, that is Joe Scarborough, former member of your Republican Conference, issuing that indictment. Not Steny Hoyer, not the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Pelosi), not even my friend, the gentleman from Washington (Mr. McDermott), but Joe Scarborough: ``We lied.''
Last year's record budget deficits of $375 billion will be eclipsed by a projected deficit of $422 billion this year and deficits totaling nearly $2.3 trillion in the next 10 years. That is the result of ``we lied.'' And because of the Republican Party's fiscal mismanagement, this Congress is on the verge of increasing the ceiling on the national debt for the third time in 3 years to $8.1 trillion, but it lacks the courage to do so on an up-or-down vote before the November elections. The gentleman from Texas (Mr. Stenholm) has tried to have us do that.
Very frankly, if that is the issue, I vote aye. I am not for America welching on its debts. I am not for doing it secretly. I am not for doing it in the dead of night. I am not for hypocrisy which said, when we were in charge, oh, you cannot do that, and when you are in charge, hiding it under the rug.
Now, Mr. Speaker, I join virtually every Member of this body on both sides of the aisle in supporting the extension of middle-class tax cuts, the child tax credit, marriage penalty relief and expansion of the 10 percent income tax bracket. But we cannot continue to disregard fiscal reality. It is very nice to say that we are going to give everybody a tax cut and have the gentlewoman from Pennsylvania come up here and say, the extensions will help. They will; we agree with her. But deep deficits will not help our economy in the years ahead. We cannot ignore the historical turnaround from budget surpluses to record deficits and exploding debt during the last 4 years.
We conservatives are offended by going deeply into debt. Fiscal irresponsibility is radical, is not conservative. It puts our country at risk. We cannot continue to pretend the tax cuts have no effect on our Nation's ability to invest in homeland security, invest in education, veterans and health care, and we must not ignore this generation's responsibility to our children and grandchildren.
I have three children and three grandchildren, and we are putting them very deeply into debt. That is wrong. Saddling them with deeper debt and a diminished future is nothing less than fiscal child abuse. Hear me: fiscal child abuse.
I urge my colleagues to vote conservatively, to make sure that we do not plunge this country deeper into debt. Let us extend these tax cuts, but let us pay for them. That is what this generation has a responsibility to do for the next generation.
Let me continue to read from what I know my colleagues want to hear from their conservative colleague, Mr. Scarborough: ``Mr. Bush, like most Republicans these days, only pays lip service to smaller government and balanced budgets. He is, after all, a President who inherited a $155 billion surplus and turned it into a $442 billion deficit.'' Mr. Scarborough, our conservative former colleague said,
``It is ironic that we Republicans took control of Congress in 1994 by attacking Bill Clinton for his free-spending ways. But spending grew annually under Mr. Clinton at a 3.4 percent rate, while exploding under President Bush at a 10.4 percent clip. Republicans taking credit for restraining Mr. Clinton need to explain why they did not hold their own President to the same standards.''
How ironic it is that my Republican friends claim credit for restraining the government when we had the presidency, but they cannot do it when their own President is in charge. Can anybody believe that representation?
I am going to vote no on this tax bill. I urge others to. The individual items in this bill are good, but the overall policy is disastrous, and Joe Scarborough told the truth.
Mr. REYNOLDS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
We are getting into some of the theatrics of politics 40 days before an election. I accept that. But I also want to say that before Joe Scarborough was elected in 1994, in the time he served, it was the failed liberal policies of 40 years that knew tax and spend, in this House and allowed the policy that started in 1995 which was to stop a train wreck, and also begin to move forward in recovering from the largest tax increase in American history in 1993.
Now, what I also find ironic, the Democratic leadership of the House never listened to Joe Scarborough when he was a Member but might choose to now that he is a pundit and an author.
But the fact is, as we look at this legislation on the underlying bill, as we consider this rule today, this rule prevents a tax increase on families, middle-class American families that the politics of America has been addressing day in and day out while the 2004 election is underway. If you do not vote for it, you begin to threaten the aspect that middle America will have a tax increase.
This relief is provided for in the President's budget, which holds the line on spending and cuts the deficit in half over 5 years. Recent data from the Treasury Department shows we can and we are on track in meeting the President's budget goals. The Treasury data shows that tax receipts are increasing, despite the President's tax relief, proof that tax relief leads to economic growth.
Finally, Mr. Speaker, if you look at the Joint Economic Committee United States Congress Report, in their summary it clearly says in there that raising taxes to cover budget deficits is usually a bad idea because it reduces incentives to work, save and invest.
Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
{time} 1645
Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Stenholm).
(Mr. STENHOLM asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)
Mr. STENHOLM. Mr. Speaker, the comments of my friend from New York, I feel compelled to remind everyone of the words of the late Will Rogers when he said, ``It ain't people's ignorance that bothers me so much. It's them knowing so much that ain't so that is the problem.''
We can talk about this all that we want to, and I rise in strong opposition to this rule, but any Member who has ever stood on this floor and talked about fiscal responsibility should vote no on this rule. All Members who care about the future integrity of the Social Security system should vote no on this rule. All Members who care about the legacy that we will leave for future generations should vote against this rule, and you know it in your heart.
Now, I too strongly support middle class tax relief. I support extending the marriage penalty relief. I support continuing the $1,000 per child tax credit and the expanded 10 percent tax credit. I have been a strong advocate for extending the wind energy tax credit.
The question is whether or not we will provide tax relief to middle income families. The debate is not whether we should do so with borrowed money, adding more debt on top of our $7.3 trillion national debt. We should not pay for tax cuts by borrowing money against our children's future. That is the argument we make today.
Congress should be required to sit down and figure out how to make things fit within a budget just like families across the country do every day as I hear from my friends on this side all the time, except when it counts. Unfortunately, the leadership of the House seems to have forgotten that common-sense principle. Instead of figuring out how to make these tax cuts fit within our budget, the majority has decided to avoid making tough choices. Every dime of these tax cuts will be added to the debt we will leave for our children and grandchildren, and you know it.
In the next couple of weeks, we will have to vote to raise the debt ceiling unless we hide it. Last year foreign interests financed more than 70 percent of our $374 billion deficit. More than $1.8 trillion of this debt we now talk about, well, we do not talk about it on this side of the aisle, is held by foreign investors.
I find it particularly ironic that we are considering legislation that would add $146 billion to that debt on the same day the House Committee on the Judiciary has scheduled to act on a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. If a balanced budget amendment were already in the Constitution, we would not be able to continue following the budget policies being advocated by the majority. It seems only fair that those who support the amendment, as I do, be willing to budget accordingly by paying, rather than borrowing, for the policies they advocate.
The legislation before us is a perfect example of why we need a balanced budget constitutional amendment, to protect the rights of future generations who are not represented in our political system, but will bear the burden of our decisions today. It is easy for politicians to vote for tax cuts or spending increases that will benefit current voters and leave the bill to our children and grandchildren who do not have a vote.
Passing legislation cutting taxes or increasing spending without offsets today will increase the debt tax that must be paid by future generations and can never be repealed. The debt tax will consume 40 percent of all individual income taxes paid this year and will keep growing as long as we continue to pass legislation putting our Nation deeper into debt.
Continuing to run up the national debt will ensure that we and our children and grandchildren will be overtaxed for the rest of our lives. We should defeat this rule so the conferees can go back and put together a package that provides tax relief to working men and women without increasing taxes on our children and grandchildren.
To my friend from New York (Mr. Reynolds), let me remind him, it took our country 204 years to borrow the first $1 trillion, 204 years. We are borrowing $1 trillion every year and a half under the policies that you have got the guts to stand up here and say we ought to keep following.
Then vote for increasing the debt ceiling and tell the American people before November 2 this is the result of the policies. We are borrowing the money to have the policies that we are giving to you. Vote for us. Forget our grandchildren.
Mr. REYNOLDS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Well, there they go again. Let us have a plan where we will sell a loaf of bread that says we will cut middle class taxes, but then again, I do not really have a plan on how to do it.
I have been in the majority before getting here and serving in the majority since the day I got here, but that majority of the previous 40 years has nicely gotten trenched into the minority because they have a lot of rhetoric but they have not put forth a plan as to how to get the job done.
So when you look at this, the Democrats have agreed to extending child tax credit, the 10 percent tax bracket, the marriage penalty relief, however, to accomplish the offsets they want, it means they have to come up with $130 billion of either tax hikes or spending cuts. The Democrats are not prepared to make that tough choice regarding which taxes to increase or which programs to cut. They want to come up and say, I am for cutting the middle class tax, but then again, I do not see this, I do not see that, BBA, debt, but there is never a solution.
So the Democrats' plan is a zero sum game here, it provides tax relief with one hand and takes it away with the other. So the Members who should vote no on this rule are the ones not interested in helping millions of American families that deserve tax relief.
Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Wisconsin (Mr. Ryan).
Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me time.
This debate is about one basic thing. Do you think the money coming into the Federal Government is the people's money or the government's money?
Number one, what are we talking about today? What we are talking about is whether we should keep taxes at the levels they are today. Should we keep the child tax credit where it is? Should we keep the marriage penalty relief where it is by and large? And what they are saying on the other side is, okay, if we want to keep these taxes from going up, we got to raise more taxes.
So what we are looking at here is an emphasis. Is it the people's money or is it the government's money? We believe this is the people's money. We believe most importantly that people ought to be able to keep more of their paycheck in their pockets. And what we get from the other side is, to pay for this, let us raise taxes. So we are saying, to prevent these taxes from going up, we will raise taxes over here.
What we are trying to do, Mr. Speaker, is accelerate the policies and keep the policies that have been working. Letting people keep more of their own hard earned money has been good for the economy and good for the individuals and good for the families of America. Just take a look at the fact that over the last year where we have had lower tax rates we have brought in more revenues. That is right. We have got $56 billion in higher revenues this year, the deficit has gone down, under the lower tax rates that we are paying today, than a year ago under higher tax rates.
Why? Because we have better economic growth, because we have more jobs being produced in this economy, because more people are paying taxes because they have a job to pay taxes in.
So why would we want to go down the road of raising taxes to keep these tax levels where they are, to kill the goose that is laying the golden egg that is giving us this economic recovery that is now underway. Point number one.
Point number two, this is already in the President's budget. The President's budget, which is to slash the deficit in half within 5 years, accommodates this policy. I wish we had a budget resolution in full force which is what we passed in the House which froze domestic spending, met our priorities overseas in fighting the war on terrorism, in protecting the homeland and froze domestic spending. Unfortunately, the other body failed to do this.
So the question before us on this rule is do you think that the middle class families ought to be able to keep more of their own money? Do you think that these tax extenders which would go away and raise taxes on the economy and raise taxes on businesses should come into law or not? Or should we keep these tax increases from hitting the economy? Should we have keep these taxes from being raised on families, and is the only way to do that to just raise taxes on someone else?
No. Let us put the emphasis where it ought to be, on spending. Let us put the emphasis on where it ought to be, on letting people keep more hard earned money in their paychecks, in their wallets. Let us not put the emphasis on continuing to raise taxes.
There is a fundamental, philosophical difference between the two parties. You are seeing it on display here on the House floor. We just fundamentally disagree. We believe that people ought to be able to keep more of their own hard-earned money. It is a belief we have. And that belief has translated time and time again, under Jack Kennedy, under Calvin Coolidge, under Ronald Reagan, and, yes, now under this current President, to produce better economic growth, better economic policy and, yes, more revenues. That is what is happening today.
Let us keep the taxes low. Let us prevent the families have having tax increases. Let us not raise taxes. Let us keep them low. I urge adoption of this rule.
Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
If I could say to the previous speaker, the idea of it being the people's money, obviously, all taxes are the people's money. It is also the people's debt that we are running up. They might want us to have some consideration for that.
Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Connecticut (Ms. DeLauro).
Ms. DeLAURO. Mr. Speaker, today we prepare to pass what this majority has called ``The All American Tax Relief Act.'' But that name masks the fact that the Republicans are, in fact, increasing the taxes on 4 million working Americans. If I could make reference to the prior speaker, these are 4 million people who are getting their taxes increased. Because the House Republican leadership refused to lower the income threshold for the child tax credit, 9 million children are being deliberately left out of the tax relief that is included in this legislation. This is the story.
The eligibility level for the child tax credit will rise to $11,000 next year. So a family making $10,000, that qualifies now will be in for a rude awakening on April 15. They will not qualify. And because household income has actually declined by more than $1,500 under this administration, many families whose income taxes have gone down in the last 4 years will see their child tax credit shrink or even disappear next year because of this bill. So much for no new taxes.
And the Republican leadership has demonstrated the depth of their disdain for these families, saying that the child tax credit is not intended to serve as a ``welfare program.'' But these families are not on welfare. They work hard. They earn the minimum wage. And I would challenge any Member of this body to raise a family earning the minimum wage. It is just about impossible. As a matter of fact, this body voted itself a raise in salary just not a week ago.
Righting this injustice would cost about $4.3 billion, a little more than a third of the cost of the $12 billion in tax breaks for big businesses in this bill.
This very morning, The Wall Street Journal, the article on page 2, some top companies avoided Federal income tax under Bush. So much for the people being able to get a break. It would appear that the friends of the administration, the large corporations are getting a break. Eighty-two of the country's largest profitable corporations have paid no Federal income tax in at least one of the last 3 years. Yet this Republican leadership saw fit to give them more tax breaks while raising taxes on minimum wage families and middle class families.
What this administration does is reward wealth and it taxes wages. So this is the All American Tax Relief. Eighty-two of our most profitable corporations, companies like Enron, pay nothing in income tax. Twelve billion dollars in tax breaks at the last minute for businesses. Nine million children are left out in the cold.
I want to remind this majority, those children are every bit as American as the rest. They deserve better than this tax.
Mr. REYNOLDS. Mr. Speaker, as I said earlier, we are getting down into election year, and I am so used to the other side of the aisle using class warfare, more importantly, I guess the American people are, that it is totally false, the information coming out here.
The information is false. The bill does not increase taxes on anyone. It actually increases the refundability of the child tax credit for low income families; $23 billion comes back to low income working families to help them, and they do not pay income tax in the category that is the outlay.
So, in other words, low income families who pay no income tax at all still will receive an additional $23 billion in the bill.
{time} 1700
As I said, Mr. Speaker, it is an election year. Prior to 2001, the child credit was refundable only for those families with three or more children. This President, under 2001 tax relief, made all families with children eligible for the refundable child credit.
The size of the refundable credit is based on the family's earned income in excess of $10,000, which is indexed for inflation; and what I am seeing from the other side of the aisle is argument that the $10,000 limit should not be indexed for inflation so that families can receive a bigger check from the government. Ironically, they did not make this argument in 2001 when the refund was created in the first place.
It is very important that our colleagues understand $23 billion of outlays are going to help people who do not pay income tax in the low-
income levels of our society.
Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Washington (Mr. McDermott).
(Mr. McDERMOTT asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks, and include extraneous material.)
Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, I will enter into the Record at this point an article from the Boston Globe entitled ``Sticking it to working families,'' that shows how this Congress is raising taxes on 4 million low-income families which support 9 million children.
Sticking it to Working Families
(By Thomas Oliphant)
Washington.--Only in George Bush's privileged America could the following outrage occur:
Despite the president's supposed theological objection to tax increases, that is exactly what about 4 million families with roughly 9 million children are about to experience, with Bush's cynical support.
The outrage is actually worse, because the shiv is about to be stuck in these hand-working families under the guise of an effort to help them.
Congress is about to pass a catch-all measure allegedly designed to deal with several problems affecting middle-income and lower-income working families arising from the tax cuts of recent years. The problems are a graphic illustration of how shoddy legislation written by people who mostly focus on big-shot lobbyists can cause ordinary Americans to plummet through the cracks. At issue is the child tax credit--which first appeared in tax law in the late 1990s in a budget deal between the Clinton administration and the Republican Congress. This provision permits a deduction from income taxes due for each child under the age of 17 in a household. In 2001, the value of the credit was set to gradually increase to $1,000 per child, but in the package of additional tax cuts enacted two years later, the phase-in was eliminated and the full, $1,000 figure was made immediately effective.
The problem arises because parts of the law governing the child tax credit are ``indexed'' to remove the effects of inflation and parts are not. The value of the credit itself, for example, is not indexed; neither are the income amounts above which the value of the credit begins to phase out
($75,000 for a head of household, $110,000 for a married couple).
On the other hand, the income thresholds above which a working person can claim a ``refundable'' child tax credit--a check from the government if income tax liability is so low to begin with that the person would not get his full credit--are indexed for inflation. The original legislation permitted a refundable child tax credit for families worth up to 10 percent of their earnings above $10,000. That indexed earnings amount is now $10,750.
And there's the rub. An analysis by the Urban Institute and the University of Wisconsin offers the example of a married couple with two children who work at the federal minimum wage of a puny $5.15 an hour. Three years ago, their income of
$20,6000 would have produced a child tax credit refund of
$1,060. With a higher threshold two years later, the credit's value drops 5 percent to $1,010.
But that's just the tip of the iceberg. As ordinary Americans know too well, incomes downscale in the United States have been worse than stagnant in this decade. Not only has the minimum wage not budged in seven years, but family incomes above that have also suffered severely since 2000, and the suffering has been proportionately greater the lower you go on the income scale.
Moreover, this decline in earnings (even before inflation in cases like workers with less than a high school education or single parents) has been accompanied by large increases in the cost of necessities--including everything from gasoline to health insurance for those low-income workers lucky enough to have any. In the expert analysis--Leonard Burman of the Urban Institute and John Karl Scholz of the University of Wisconsin--a single parent who got a $109 credit in 2001 would have received nothing last year even though her earnings fell.
Looking ahead to next year and beyond, it is helpful that the refund rate will rise to 15 from 10 percent, but it will largely ignore the working families with the lowest incomes. As the analysis sums up: ``The higher phase-in rate will do nothing to abate the underlying problem that arises from stagnant income growth at the bottom of the earnings distribution. Low-income households with earnings that grow slower than inflation will see their child tax credit erode in real terms every year, and at a rate that is even faster than their decline in real earnings.''
Bush and his Republican Congress buddies could fix all this substantially, by simply restoring the original $10,000 threshold. The cost to the government would have been $4.3 billion over five years.
The fact that they did nothing is eloquent testimony to the status of working families in today's political culture. The next time Bush trumpets his opposition to tax increases, John Kerry should say something about the 4 million families Bush prefers not to count.
Mr. Speaker, low- and middle-income Americans need help. They need help paying for college, health care, and things that every family needs. When I heard the House is going to do this, I thought, oh, boy, I better get my rubber stamp and get out and help the President do it. It sounded like a good idea. The middle class has been pummeled in the last years.
Between 1979 and the year 2000, the income of the top 5 percent in this country has increased 200 percent. During the same period, the income of the middle class grew by 12 percent, and low-income families have seen their income actually drop. Roughly during the same period, the top 5 percent saw their income tax rates sliced in half and enjoyed a precipitous decline in taxation of their investment income. Meanwhile, Social Security and Medicare taxes, a burden carried primarily by the low- and middle-class taxpayers, grew 82 percent faster than their incomes did.
Mr. Speaker, when President Bush came in, income inequality got worse. The Bush tax cuts increased the after-tax income of the top 5 percent by 8 percent, while our middle class watched their incomes decline during the same period.
We have to do something to help the middle class; but after reading this bill, I learned that my colleagues are asking us to play charades today.
This bill gives the average middle-class household $169 of tax relief, but guess what, it gives the top 5 percent $2,000 worth of tax cuts. So for every dollar that my colleagues provide in tax relief to the middle income, they provide $10 additional for the top 5 percent of income earners, which happens to include ourselves. Where is the fairness? Where are our priorities if we vote for this thing?
New data from the U.S. Labor Department indicates that since Bush took office at least 670,000 manufacturing jobs have been lost to foreign trade. The CRS, the Congressional Research Service, recently estimated that 860,000 service sector jobs were shifted offshore in 2003 and 2004.
Mr. Bush went to Harvard Law School or went to business school, I guess; but I do not think it had much effect on him. He has not asked the Congress to do anything to address our competitiveness problem. He just asked us to pass tax cuts for the richest among us. Mr. Speaker, he may have gone to grad school or business school, but it really has done nothing for him.
The bill before us is going to add $146 billion to our budget deficit. Where are we going to get that from? We are going to borrow it. We are going to go to the Chinese and say, hey, we have got some notes we want to sell you; would you like to buy some of our notes? How about you, Japanese; would you like to buy some of our notes? That is where this tax cut is coming from. The gentleman says it is coming from our money; it is not. It is coming out of the Japanese if they buy the bonds.
Mr. REYNOLDS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Half of the cost of this bill is child credit, which has an income limit. High-income people do not qualify. So I want to make sure that is on the record after my colleague just spoke.
My colleague is right, though, that low-income families do need help, and that is just exactly what this conference report does. It provides
$23 billion in outlays. In other words, low-income families who pay no income taxes at all will receive an additional $23 billion from the government under this bill.
Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Mississippi (Mr. Taylor).
Mr. TAYLOR of Mississippi. Mr. Speaker, for those of my colleagues who follow the debates on the House floor, they know in the past month they have heard a lot of talk about morals, about patriotism, and sound economic policy. I do not see how adding $146 billion to our Nation's debt makes any of them better. As a matter of fact, I would like the gentleman from New York (Mr. Reynolds) to look me in the eye because I am going to tell him that I think it is immoral that the Republican-led Congress has added $1,712,281,371,000 worth of debt to our Nation, to our children; and I would like the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Hyde) to please look at me, because to our Nation's unborn children he has stuck them with that bill.
I will tell my colleagues that it is immoral that this Republican-led Congress since May 9, 2001, has stolen, and please listen to my words, stolen $521 billion from the Social Security trust fund. When my colleagues take money that people paid into Social Security and use it to the pay for someone else's tax break, they have stolen it. It is not there and they have no plan to pay it back.
I will say it is unpatriotic that in the 10 years that my colleagues have controlled this House that they have increased the national debt by $2,557,432,000,000; and by the way, one-third of all of the debt accumulated in this country in over 225 years, one-third of it has been accumulated in less than 10 years by a Republican House of Representatives.
Lastly, I want to hear someone tell me how it is sound economic policy for a Nation to borrow $3 for every $1 given back in tax breaks, and please check the Treasury figures. My colleagues have added
$1,857,747,000,000 to the debt in order to give people $620 billion back.
So I will question my colleagues' morality for sticking my kids with their bills. I will question their patriotism because I think they are bankrupting this country; and lastly, I will question their so-called sound economic policy that has gone out and borrowed three bucks for every buck they gave back in tax breaks. This is not what is good for our country. It is not what is good for our kids, and it is not what is good for America.
I urge my colleagues to defeat this rule. I urge my colleagues, for once, let us draw the line and start thinking of the future of this country instead of seeing how many cute things they can do in the 40 days before the election that will get them a few more campaign contributions at the expense of trillions of dollars in debt.
The folks who said we are borrowing this money from the Chinese, every word of that is true. We now owe the Communist Chinese $300 billion. Tell me how that is good for our country.
Mr. REYNOLDS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Just as I listened carefully, I thought I understood that the Republicans since being in the control of the majority have brought about a third of the country's debt in policy decisions. I guess that would mean two-thirds of the debt would be borne by the Democratic minority party.
Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from California (Ms. Waters).
Ms. WATERS. Mr. Speaker, I find this debate to be extremely interesting. The gentleman on the opposite side of the aisle asks why are we listening to Joe Scarborough. Well, not only are we listening to him, I am listening to Pat Buchanan. Pat Buchanan said my colleagues are a bunch of fake conservatives, they have run up this deficit, and I have to remind my colleagues when Bill Clinton left office we had a reserve. We had money in the bank, and since they have been in power, the Republicans have been in power, this administration, they have been spending like drunken sailors.
My colleagues have created a $7.3 trillion tax debt. Buchanan says my colleagues are not true conservatives; and at the same time that they created this debt and it keeps growing, they had the audacity to come into the Committee on the Judiciary and pretend to attempt to pass a balanced budget amendment. We know that that was just a political act. As a matter of fact, one of my colleagues reminded my colleagues that they are in charge of the House, they have the majority in the Senate, they have the White House. They could work to balance this budget anytime they want to. They do not need to have a balanced budget amendment, but they cannot do that because they are in the political mode in an election year, and they come back with the most outrageous public policy to extend tax cuts.
It does not take a Harvard scholar to know that we cannot keep spending, spending, spending and at the same time reduce the amount of money that is coming in. My colleagues are mismanaging $4 billion a month, and they cannot win with the $4 billion. $4 billion a month, no post-war planning, we cannot even take Fallujah and Najaf. The soldiers do not have all of their equipment, and my colleagues are coming back for more money.
Well, on top of that, when we look at what is happening domestically, 44 million Americans with no health insurance, a housing crisis, veterans crying, and my colleagues are going to come in here and give a tax cut to the richest corporations and Americans in this country. It is outrageous. It does not make good sense. They ought to be ashamed of themselves.
Mr. REYNOLDS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
It just is something, I would almost like to look at that particular time transcript before 1994, when I think of the failed liberal spending policies of the previous majority; but we are here today and we have to reflect that in the 21st century we have faced 9/11, a recession, corporate scandal, reinvestment into the types of things that we have had to do in order to get the economy moving again, create jobs, open opportunity, but also to make sure that we are moving again and moving strong on homeland security and our national defense, which was all but beaten up pretty well in the nineties.
As we move forward, we have also done it with the aspect of a President outlining in this budget, which I hope this Congress, both sides of the aisle, might hold the line on the spending and cuts so that we can achieve the deficit reduction by cutting it in half over 5 years as the President outlined, and then how the House Republican majority put forth in its budget this year as well, the plan to do that.
But I will also say that while I have enjoyed listening to comments from the sidelines about the aspect of tax cuts or how to help middle-
class Americans not see a tax increase or low-income Americans not see a tax increase or expanding $23 billion of outlays to low-income Americans who would be benefited by this legislation today, I have not seen any plan that is even on the table from the other side of the aisle that will make the tough choices we have with this legislation and the underlying bill or they have a proposal of raising taxes or cutting programs, some other solution than this.
But I do know this, Mr. Speaker, if my colleagues vote ``no'' on this, they are voting to raise middle America and the low-income families of this country's taxes, and if my colleagues vote ``yes'' for this rule, and they vote ``yes'' for the underlying legislation, they are going to keep millions of Americans from having to pay more in taxes.
Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
I am going to be asking for a ``no'' vote on the previous question. If the previous question is defeated, I will offer an amendment that directs the enrolling Clerk to add language to the conference report that pays for this bill. The previous question directs the Secretary of the Treasury to pay for the costs of the bill by rolling back part of the tax breaks of those incomes exceeding $1 million annually.
{time} 1715
These millionaires will still receive a substantial portion of their tax cuts, but a modest rollback will offset the cost of this bill for middle-income American families.
Mr. Speaker, I think many Members of this body want to see the tax breaks in this bill extended. I know I do, particularly the child tax credit. However, many of us are very concerned about the legislation's substantial price tag, and I think this is a fair and reasonable way to address that cost.
I want to stress that a ``no'' vote on the previous question will not stop consideration of the conference report for the tax bill. A ``no'' vote will allow the House to amend the rule to make the changes necessary for this conference report to pay for these tax cuts, and not increase our already-bloated and record-breaking deficit. However, a
``yes'' vote on the previous question will not allow the changes to be made and will drive up our debt to the tune of $146 billion. I urge a
``no'' vote on the previous question so we can fix this conference report.
Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Arkansas
(Mr. Berry).
Mr. BERRY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman from New York for yielding me this time. I cannot think of a more disturbing situation than we face today. I hear my colleagues on the other side of the aisle talk about this great prosperity that we are enjoying. We all know that is not true. We all know that the average family in this country, at least in the First Congressional District of Arkansas, the average family has lost $1,500 a year in income. The cost of gasoline has doubled. The cost of health care is so high they just simply cannot afford it anymore, yet we are presented with this idea.
If we do this ridiculous thing, and we continue on this path of reducing taxes on the very wealthiest people in this country, and allow working people to be taken advantage of in the way that is happening today, it is going to destroy this country. I agree with the gentleman from Mississippi (Mr. Taylor), this is immoral.
It is wrong to continue to add debt on top of debt on top of debt on our children and grandchildren. No right-thinking person in the world would do that, and yet the Republicans all continue to want to do that. And then my colleagues on the other side of the aisle talk about how prosperous we are.
My goodness alive, if we are doing so good, how did we go from a $5 trillion surplus to $3 trillion in additional debt? That is impossible if we are doing well. You do not have to be all broken out with brains to figure this out. My colleagues do not want to do this to their children and grandchildren, and I do not either.
Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the amendment I referred to earlier be printed in the Record immediately before the vote on the previous question.
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Simpson). Is there objection to the request of the gentlewoman from New York?
There was no objection.
Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I urge a ``no'' vote on the previous question, and I yield back the balance of my time.
Mr. REYNOLDS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time, and in my closing remarks, I just want to remind my colleagues that this rule gives us the opportunity to have the debate on the Working Families Tax Relief Act of 2004. It extends family tax provisions through 2010, it provides assistance to military families in combat zones, it provides and extends relief from the alternative minimum tax, or AMT, through 2005, it creates a uniform definition of a child for tax purposes, and it extends 23 expiring tax provisions that end this year unless they are authorized in extension.
Mr. Speaker, a ``yes'' vote today seizes on the momentum we have created towards a strong economy and sends a clear message that this Congress supports putting real dollars back where they belong, in the hands of hardworking men and women. A ``no'' vote simply prevents this needed relief from becoming a reality and denies our constituents the assistance they have earned. In other words, will provide a tax increase on them if this bill is not passed.
Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to join me in supporting the rule and the underlying conference report.
Mr. REYNOLDS. Mr. Speaker, I was incorrect when I mentioned in my opening remarks that the conference report included a provision suspending tax-exempt status of designated terrorist organizations. While it was included in an earlier version of the bill, that provision has already been signed into law under the Military Family Tax Relief Act and it was therefore unnecessary to include it in the Working Families Tax Relief Act.
The text of the amendment previously referred to by Ms. Slaughter is as follows:
Previous Question of H. Res. __ Rule on H.R. 1308--Child Tax Credit
Conference Report
Strike all after the resolved clause and insert:
``That upon adoption of this resolution it shall be in order to consider the conference report to accompany the bill
(H.R. 1308) to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to accelerate the increase in the refundability of the child tax credit, and for other purposes. All points of order against the conference report and against its consideration are waived. The conference report shall be considered as read.
Sec. 2. (a) A concurrent resolution specified in subsection
(b) is hereby adopted.
(b) The concurrent resolution referred to in subsection (a) is a concurrent resolution
(1) which has no preamble;
(2) the title of which is as follows: ``Providing for Corrections to the Enrollment of the Conference Report on the bill H.R. 1308''; and
(3) the text of which is as follows:
Concurrent Resolution
Directing the Clerk of the House of Representatives to take certain actions in the enrollment of H.R. 1308.
Resolved by the House of Representatives (the Senate concurring), That, in the enrollment of the bill, H.R. 1308, the Clerk of the House of Representatives shall add at the end of the bill the following (and conform the table of contents accordingly):
SEC.__. BENEFITS EXTENSION NOT TO INCREASE FEDERAL BUDGET
DEFICIT.
(a) In General.--Section 1 is amended by adding at the end the following new subsection:
``(j) Additional Tax on High Income Tax-payers.--
``(1) In General.--The amount determined under subsection
(a), (b), (c), (d) or (e), as the case may be, shall be increased by the applicable percentage of so much of adjusted gross income as exceeds $1,000,000 in the case of individuals to whom subsection (a) applies ($500,000 in any other case).
``(2) Applicable percentage.--For purposes of paragraph
(1), the applicable percentage is the percentage determined by the Secretary to be necessary for the Working Families Tax Relief Act of 2004 to be revenue neutral over the 10-fiscal year period beginning with fiscal year 2005.''.
(b) Effective Date.--The amendment made by this section shall apply to taxable years beginning after December 31, 2004.
Mr. REYNOLDS. Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time, and I move the previous question on the resolution.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The question is on ordering the previous question.
The question was taken; and the Speaker pro tempore announced that the ayes appeared to have it.
Ms. SLAUGHTER. Mr. Speaker, I object to the vote on the ground that a quorum is not present and make the point of order that a quorum is not present.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Evidently a quorum is not present.
The Sergeant at Arms will notify absent Members.
Without objection, and notwithstanding any intervening debate, the Chair will reduce to 5 minutes the minimum time for any electric vote on the question of adopting the resolution.
There was no objection.
The vote was taken by electronic device, and there were--yeas 212, nays 193, not voting 28, as follows:
YEAS--212
AderholtAkinAlexanderBachusBakerBallengerBarrett (SC)Bartlett (MD)Barton (TX)BassBeauprezBiggertBilirakisBishop (UT)BlackburnBluntBoehlertBoehnerBonillaBonoBoozmanBradley (NH)Brady (TX)Brown (SC)Brown-Waite, GinnyBurgessBurnsBurrBurton (IN)BuyerCalvertCampCantorCapitoCarterCastleChabotChocolaCobleColeCoxCraneCrenshawCubinCulbersonCunninghamDavis, Jo AnnDavis, TomDeLayDeMintDiaz-Balart, L.Diaz-Balart, M.DoolittleDreierDuncanDunnEhlersEmersonEnglishEverettFeeneyFergusonFlakeFoleyForbesFossellaFranks (AZ)FrelinghuysenGalleglyGerlachGibbonsGilchrestGillmorGingreyGoodeGoodlatteGossGrangerGreen (WI)GreenwoodGutknechtHallHarrisHartHastings (WA)HayesHayworthHefleyHensarlingHergerHobsonHoekstraHostettlerHoughtonHulshofHunterHydeIsaksonIssaJenkinsJohnson (CT)Johnson (IL)Johnson, SamJones (NC)KellerKellyKennedy (MN)King (IA)King (NY)KingstonKirkKlineKnollenbergKolbeLaHoodLathamLaTouretteLeachLewis (CA)Lewis (KY)LinderLoBiondoLucas (OK)ManzulloMcCotterMcCreryMcHughMcInnisMcKeonMicaMiller (MI)Miller, GaryMoran (KS)MurphyMusgraveNethercuttNeugebauerNeyNorthupNorwoodNussleOseOtterOxleyPaulPearcePencePeterson (PA)PetriPickeringPittsPlattsPomboPorterPortmanPryce (OH)PutnamRadanovichRamstadRegulaRehbergRenziReynoldsRogers (AL)Rogers (KY)Rogers (MI)RohrabacherRos-LehtinenRoyceRyan (WI)Ryun (KS)SaxtonSchrockSensenbrennerSessionsShadeggShawShaysSherwoodShimkusShusterSimmonsSimpsonSmith (MI)Smith (NJ)Smith (TX)SouderStearnsSullivanSweeneyTaylor (NC)TerryThomasThornberryTiahrtTiberiToomeyTurner (OH)UptonWalden (OR)WalshWampWeldon (FL)Weldon (PA)WellerWhitfieldWickerWilson (NM)Wilson (SC)WolfYoung (AK)Young (FL)
NAYS--193
AbercrombieAckermanAllenAndrewsBacaBairdBaldwinBecerraBellBerkleyBermanBerryBishop (NY)BlumenauerBoswellBoucherBoydBrady (PA)Brown (OH)Brown, CorrineButterfieldCappsCapuanoCardinCardozaCarson (IN)Carson (OK)CaseChandlerClayClyburnConyersCooperCostelloCramerCrowleyCummingsDavis (AL)Davis (CA)Davis (FL)Davis (IL)Davis (TN)DeFazioDeGetteDeLauroDeutschDicksDingellDoggettDooley (CA)DoyleEdwardsEmanuelEngelEshooEtheridgeEvansFarrFattahFilnerFordFrank (MA)FrostGonzalezGordonGrijalvaGutierrezHarmanHastings (FL) HillHincheyHinojosaHoeffelHoldenHoltHondaHooley (OR)HoyerInsleeIsraelJackson (IL)Jackson-Lee (TX)JeffersonJohnJohnson, E. B.Jones (OH)KanjorskiKapturKennedy (RI)KildeeKilpatrickKindKucinichLampsonLangevinLantosLarsen (WA)Larson (CT)LeeLevinLewis (GA)LofgrenLoweyLynchMaloneyMarkeyMarshallMathesonMatsuiMcCarthy (NY)McCollumMcDermottMcGovernMcIntyreMcNultyMeehanMeek (FL)Meeks (NY)MenendezMichaudMillender-McDonaldMiller (NC)Miller, GeorgeMollohanMooreMoran (VA)MurthaNadlerNapolitanoNeal (MA)OberstarObeyOlverOrtizOwensPallonePascrellPastorPaynePelosiPeterson (MN)PomeroyPrice (NC)RahallRangelReyesRodriguezRossRothmanRoybal-AllardRuppersbergerRushRyan (OH)SaboSanchez, Linda T.Sanchez, LorettaSandersSandlinSchakowskySchiffScott (GA)Scott (VA)SerranoShermanSkeltonSlaughterSnyderSolisSprattStarkStenholmStricklandStupakTannerTauscherTaylor (MS)Thompson (CA)TierneyTownsTurner (TX)Udall (NM)Van HollenVelazquezViscloskyWatersWatsonWattWaxmanWeinerWexlerWoolseyWuWynn
NOT VOTING--28
Bishop (GA)BonnerCannonCollinsDeal (GA)DelahuntGarrett (NJ)GephardtGravesGreen (TX)HersethIstookKleczkaLipinskiLucas (KY)MajetteMcCarthy (MO)Miller (FL)MyrickNunesOsborneQuinnSmith (WA)TancredoTauzinThompson (MS)Udall (CO)Vitter
Announcement by the Speaker Pro Tempore
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Simpson) (during the vote). Members are advised 2 minutes remain in this vote.
{time} 1744
Mr. EMANUEL changed his vote from ``yea'' to ``nay.''
Mrs. MILLER of Michigan and Mr. TERRY changed their vote from ``nay'' to ``yea.''
So the previous question was ordered.
The result of the vote was announced as above recorded.
Stated against:
Ms. McCARTHY of Missouri. Mr. Speaker, during rollcall vote No. 470, the previous question, I was unavoidably detained. Had I been present, I would have voted ``no.''
(Mr. HASTERT asked and was given permission to speak out of order and to revise and extend his remarks.)
Congratulating Porter Goss
Mr. HASTERT. Mr. Speaker, I want to take this moment to inform the House that one of our most distinguished Members is leaving us and will resign as of midnight tonight.
Yesterday, the other body did something good. They confirmed our colleague, Porter Goss, as the next director of Central Intelligence. I have known Porter Goss for a long time. He has been a person that I have relied on for a variety of issues. He has great judgment, an abundance of common sense and a real ability to bring people together to get good things done for the American people. Porter has been chairman of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence for 8 years. He knows the CIA inside out, and he has good ideas on how to make sure our intelligence agencies are the best in the world.
Porter, we are going to miss you, but we know you will be doing your best to make this Nation, America, more secure. Thank you, and God bless you.
{time} 1745
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Simpson). The question is on the resolution.
The question was taken; and the Speaker pro tempore announced that the ayes appeared to have it.
Recorded Vote
Mr. REYNOLDS. Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.
A recorded vote was ordered.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. This will be a 5-minute vote.
The vote was taken by electronic device, and there were--ayes 235, noes 167, not voting 31, as follows:
AYES--235
AbercrombieAderholtAkinAlexanderBachusBakerBallengerBarrett (SC)Bartlett (MD)Barton (TX)BassBeauprezBerkleyBiggertBilirakisBishop (UT)BlackburnBluntBoehlertBoehnerBonillaBonoBoozmanBoucherBradley (NH)Brady (TX)Brown (SC)Brown-Waite, GinnyBurgessBurnsBurrBurton (IN)ButterfieldBuyerCalvertCampCantorCapitoCarterCaseCastleChabotChandlerChocolaCobleColeCoxCramerCraneCrenshawCrowleyCubinCulbersonCunninghamDavis (CA)Davis (TN)Davis, Jo AnnDavis, TomDeLayDeMintDiaz-Balart, L.Diaz-Balart, M.DoolittleDreierDuncanDunnEhlersEmersonEnglishEverettFeeneyFergusonFlakeFoleyForbesFossellaFranks (AZ)FrelinghuysenFrostGalleglyGerlachGibbonsGilchrestGillmorGingreyGoodeGoodlatteGossGrangerGreen (WI)GreenwoodGutknechtHallHarrisHartHastings (WA)HayesHayworthHefleyHensarlingHergerHinojosaHobsonHoekstraHostettlerHoughtonHulshofHunterHydeIsaksonIssaJenkinsJohnson (CT)Johnson (IL)Johnson, SamJones (NC)KellerKellyKennedy (MN)King (IA)King (NY)KingstonKirkKlineKnollenbergKolbeLaHoodLathamLaTouretteLeachLewis (CA)Lewis (KY)LinderLoBiondoLoweyLucas (OK)MaloneyManzulloMarshallMathesonMcCotterMcCreryMcHughMcInnisMcIntyreMcKeonMicaMiller (MI)Miller, GaryMooreMoran (KS)MurphyMusgraveNethercuttNeugebauerNeyNorthupNorwoodNussleOrtizOseOtterOxleyPearcePencePeterson (PA)PetriPickeringPittsPlattsPomboPorterPortmanPryce (OH)PutnamRadanovichRamstadRegulaRehbergRenziReyesReynoldsRogers (AL)Rogers (KY)Rogers (MI)RohrabacherRos-LehtinenRoyceRyan (WI)Ryun (KS)SandlinSaxtonSchrockSensenbrennerSessionsShadeggShawShaysSherwoodShimkusShusterSimmonsSimpsonSkeltonSmith (MI)Smith (NJ)Smith (TX)SouderStearnsSullivanSweeneyTancredoTaylor (NC)TerryThomasThornberryTiahrtTiberiToomeyTurner (OH)UptonWalden (OR)WalshWampWeldon (FL)Weldon (PA)WellerWhitfieldWickerWilson (NM)Wilson (SC)WolfWuYoung (AK)Young (FL)
NOES--167
AckermanAllenAndrewsBacaBairdBaldwinBecerraBellBermanBerryBishop (NY)BlumenauerBoswellBoydBrady (PA)Brown (OH)Brown, CorrineCapuanoCardinCardozaCarson (IN)Carson (OK)ClayClyburnConyersCooperCostelloCummingsDavis (AL)Davis (FL)Davis (IL)DeGetteDeLauroDeutschDicksDingellDooley (CA)DoyleEdwardsEmanuelEngelEshooEtheridgeEvansFarrFattahFilnerFordFrank (MA)GonzalezGrijalvaGutierrezHarmanHastings (FL)HillHincheyHoeffelHoldenHoltHondaHooley (OR)HoyerInsleeIsraelJackson (IL)Jackson-Lee (TX)JeffersonJohnJohnson, E. B.Jones (OH)KanjorskiKapturKennedy (RI)KildeeKilpatrickKindKucinichLampsonLangevinLantosLarsen (WA)Larson (CT)LeeLevinLewis (GA)LofgrenLynchMajetteMarkeyMatsuiMcCarthy (NY)McCollumMcDermottMcGovernMcNultyMeehanMeek (FL)Meeks (NY)MenendezMichaudMillender-McDonaldMiller (NC)Miller, GeorgeMollohanMoran (VA)MurthaNadlerNapolitanoNeal (MA)OberstarObeyOlverOwensPallonePascrellPastorPaynePelosiPeterson (MN)PomeroyPrice (NC)RahallRangelRodriguezRossRothmanRoybal-AllardRuppersbergerRushRyan (OH)SaboSanchez, Linda T.Sanchez, LorettaSandersSchakowskySchiffScott (GA)Scott (VA)SerranoShermanSlaughterSnyderSolisSprattStarkStenholmStricklandStupakTannerTauscherTaylor (MS)Thompson (CA)TierneyTownsTurner (TX)Udall (NM)Van HollenVelazquezViscloskyWatersWatsonWattWaxmanWeinerWexlerWoolseyWynn
NOT VOTING--31
Bishop (GA)BonnerCannonCappsCollinsDeal (GA)DeFazioDelahuntDoggettGarrett (NJ)GephardtGordonGravesGreen (TX)HersethIstookKleczkaLipinskiLucas (KY)McCarthy (MO)Miller (FL)MyrickNunesOsbornePaulQuinnSmith (WA)TauzinThompson (MS)Udall (CO)Vitter
Announcement by the Speaker Pro Tempore
The SPEAKER pro tempore (during the vote). Members are advised there are 2 minutes remaining in this vote.
{time} 1757
So the resolution was agreed to.
The result of the vote was announced as above recorded.
A motion to reconsider was laid on the table.
Stated against:
Ms. McCARTHY of Missouri. Mr. Speaker, during rollcall vote No. 471, on agreeing to H. Res. 794, I was unavoidably detained. Had I been present, I would have voted ``no.''
Mr. THOMAS. Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 794, I call up the conference report on the bill (H.R. 1308) to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to end certain abusive tax practices, to provide tax relief and simplification, and for other purposes.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to House Resolution 794, the conference report is considered as having been read.
(For conference report and statement, see proceedings of the House of today.)
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from California (Mr. Thomas) and the gentleman from New York (Mr. Rangel) each will control 30 minutes.
The Chair recognizes the gentleman from California (Mr. Thomas).
Mr. THOMAS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to present the conference report for H.R. 1308, the Working Families Tax Relief Act of 2004. It is, I think, a significant and timely agreement. It will prevent tax increases on millions of Americans and their families. We will renew the current law tax extenders like the R and E tax credit and take a major step towards simplifying the Tax Code by implementing the uniform definition of a child provision supported by the administration, the Senate and the House. This conference report builds upon the President's 2001 and 2003 tax relief initiatives.
Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
The chairman of the committee is correct, this is timely. It is on the eve of an election. So, therefore, Republicans believe that all tax cuts should be held back, especially the child credit, until election time. And I assume that they believe that we will not notice that they are running us deeper and deeper and deeper into deficit. But since they have no awareness or do not care about it, then once again we have a political issue that is brought to us on the floor.
How long has it been since the Republicans were talking about a balanced budget amendment? How long has it been since it was supposed to be Democrats who just tax and spend, but they were the ones who were concerned about the future of our children and our children's children?
So now they have brought a very popular bill that they are not going to get much problem from the Democrats in terms as to whether or not the middle income this time should enjoy some of the benefits that in the past they just lavished on the very wealthy. And so if we are going to extend the tax credits for children, a child tax credit, if we are going to make certain that we give some relief for married couples, if we expand the 10 percent tax bracket, who would contest these types of things?
It is true that in the conference there did not appear to be that much concern about working parents that were at the poverty line. As most of the Members know, the present legislation index, the threshold at $10,000, because of inflation it is now up to $10,750. As a result of that, some 4 million working people will be denied the tax credit, which comes to over 9 million children would be denied.
{time} 1800
In the conference when the question was raised, why can you not make provisions to take care of the children of those people that work every day and live in an inflationary society and not have them cut off, the prevailing view was this was a tax bill and not a welfare bill.
Then we had some controversy where we were able to get the majority to adjust to make certain that those young people that were fighting in combat and not having to pay taxes on their combat pay, that adjustments would be made that they still could be eligible for the Earned Income Tax Credit. But somehow they only thought that they could do it for 2 years.
The President says he does not even know whether we can win the war, and then the majority said that they would be glad to do it, except that the Internal Revenue Service would have difficulty because it is so complex. Then some Members said it was abuse. Having said that, I do not think you have to be a rocket genius to figure out how many poor infantrymen we have in Iraq and how many of them have children and how many of them are poor and how many of them we should say, hey, you are fighting for this country, and we got to give you the same benefits as we give anyone else.
So the reason given that we would not make this benefit permanent was because it was too complicated for the Internal Revenue Service to handle and we would like to see how this works.
Well, these are the poison pills that are put into a piece of legislation, that the majority is just hoping that they will be able to say that Democrats voted against the provisions to provide tax benefits for the middle class.
But one day someone is going to have to answer to these young people and their kids. One day history is going to ask us, where were we when this deficit was mounting? Where were we when we turned the moneys that we are borrowing over to the Chinese and the Japanese? Where were we when the interest on the debt exceeded that of discretionary spending? Where were those responsible Republicans when they decided to do the political thing, rather than the right thing?
Well, I, for one, am just as political as they are, and even though they did not pay for this bill, they are saying there were savings, there were loopholes, there were things they could have done. But because they are so anxious to get the jobs bill, this is the newly-
labeled jobs bill, you know, this was the bill that it turned out that the World Trade Organization said we had about $4 billion liability, so they waited for years to get us deeper and deeper in trouble, for tariffs to be against our exporters, and then say why not do what we always wanted to do, reduce taxes for corporations?
Some of us, the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Crane) and I, thought that was a great idea. How little did we know on that bill they only meant corporations that were moving their jobs overseas. But that is another bill for another day, and that is a political issue.
But here we are again, and I hope no one has to say that I voted yes and I voted no on this one, because they are driving the deficit, and we do not think that the people who deserve a tax benefit should pay the penalty, when deficits mean nothing for the $1.4 trillion tax cut they gave to the very wealthy.
Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. THOMAS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from New York once again has painted primarily a conspiracy that this was done somehow in a clandestine way. What I really want to do is make people understand that on the conference there were five Senators, three Republicans, two Democrats; and from the House there were three House Members, two Republicans, one Democrat. This provision was voted seven ayes and one no. It should not take you much time to figure out who the ``no'' was.
You also need to know that the Senator from Arkansas, Ms. Blanche Lincoln, had she had her way, based upon the amendments she offered to the conference committee which were not accepted, would have raised the price of this bill by almost $100 billion. For those people, those families, those struggling lower income people who the gentleman from New York describes as though they are getting nothing out of this bill, it is just a total cliche to say this is another tax cut for the rich as it involves $23 billion in outlays for those very same people that the gentleman from New York says were left out of the bill.
It was a bipartisan agreement. We were able to hold down the exuberance of the Democrats in the Senate. I know I am not supposed to mention the Senate, but I want everybody to remember it was the other body that would have had this bill $100 billion higher. It is not because of the fiscal restraint on the part of the majority in putting this package together.
Announcement by the Speaker Pro Tempore
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Simpson). The Chair would remind Members that references to Senators should be confined to their sponsorship of actual measures, avoiding characterizations.
Mr. THOMAS. Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Shaw), the chairman of the Subcommittee on Social Security.
Mr. SHAW. Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman for yielding me this time.
Mr. Speaker, I hear my friend from New York talking about deficits. There is one deficit that he did not talk about, and that is family deficits, the deficit where so many families are struggling and trying to do the right thing, go to work, come home, take care of their kids, and this bill addresses that.
I am sure that there are thousands or tens of thousands in the gentleman's district that are going to profit greatly from this bill, and maybe live a little better because of what is in this bill.
I think that we need to have a good debate over the issues and not sarcasm. When you get sarcasm involved and talking in broad terms, you are covering over what is in this bill. I would like to go down a few of the provisions in there.
It extends family tax relief provisions through 2010. What does that mean? Well, the marriage penalty relief. Everybody is for the marriage penalty relief. I would hope so.
The expanded 10 percent income tax bracket. If this does not pass, those brackets are going to go back up, and those are the lowest income tax brackets that we have.
The $1,000 tax credit for children. This is tremendously important for working young families.
It provides assistance for military families in combat. I have talked to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Rangel) about this very issue and he is very much aware of it and very much in favor of it. Because of the technicality of combat pay not being included in income, they lose out on tax credits of this nature, and we correct that for them. No person should be penalized because they are in a combat zone, for God's sake.
I would like to talk too about extending relief on the alternative minimum tax. I know my friend from New York is very concerned about the Alternate Minimum Tax. He, as I, would like to do away with the whole thing. I think it is a huge mess. We do take care of it, and provide that people with $58,000 in income a year are exempt from the amount if they are a married couple or $40,250 for a single individual. These are tremendously important.
There are other provisions in the bill, such as, of course, the extension of the expiring provisions, which there are some 23 of them listed, and these are available right here at the desk if anybody wants to look at them. I can tell you that almost all of them have great bipartisan support.
I do not know of anything in this bill that can be described as a Republican provision. It is a good provision, it is a working provision, and, yes, it is a jobs bill, and it is for hard-working people.
There is nothing in here for high income people of any great extent other than the fact that it will help preserve capital, which is something we all should want to do.
So I would tell all the Members on both sides of the aisle, before you vote on this, take a close look at it. I would hate to go out and say that I voted to do away with the provision that was extinguishing the marriage penalty. I would hate to go out and say that I was doing away with the $1,000 child credit. These are important to all people.
So I urge all my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to vote yes on this bill.
Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Speaker, with great pleasure, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the distinguished gentleman from California (Mr. Stark), an outstanding member of the Committee on Ways and Means.
Mr. STARK. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me time.
Mr. Speaker, I will not be sarcastic. I might be somewhat morally indignant. And I really think it is up to individual Members how they choose to vote on this bill. But I do think the bill clearly defines the Republican Party and it clearly defines the difference, and it defines compassion and conservatism as the Republicans understand it.
One might say there is some fascism in the bill and there is some socialism. That is okay too. But let us look at what the gentleman from New York (Mr. Rangel) talked about earlier.
4.3 million families in this bill, because of the Republican refusal to freeze the $10,000 cap on income, 4.3 million families below $10,750 a year will have a tax increase. That means 9.2 million children living in those families will have less money while their parents' income has stayed the same or gone up slightly. To fix that would cost $4.3 billion. There is not enough compassion on the Republican side of the aisle to find $4.3 billion over 5 years to help those 9 million of the poorest children in this country.
That is your Republican compassion. That is indecent, it is un-
Christian and it is immoral.
Now, this same Republican Party has countenanced a Tax Code on the other side. Eighty-two of the Fortune 500 companies, the most profitable companies in the country, paid no taxes over 3 years, and those 82 companies received $12.6 billion in refunds. So the Republicans are willing to give 82 rich, biggest corporations $12.6 billion.
That is conservatism. But they do not have the compassion to let $4.3 billion be spent on the 9 million poorest children. There you have it. The Republicans will help 82 of the richest corporations with three times as much money as it would take to have helped the 9 million poorest children in this country.
So whatever you vote on this bill, it does not make any difference, but know the difference between the Republicans and the Democrats.
Mr. THOMAS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, if we are trying to draw a line between Democrats and Republicans, then I think we really ought to understand that prior to the 2001 tax bill, the provision that my friend from California is getting exorcised over, allowed that refundability only for families with three or more children. That is how generous they were. President Bush, the Republican House and a Republican Senate extended that provision to all families.
They were in power for 40 years and thought it was appropriate and fair to provide refundability only to families with three or more children. We said that did not make sense. We said it should be provided to all families. Yet you just heard the diatribe about what we do or do not do. That is actually what we did.
In addition to that, it just seems to me that a Senator from Arkansas and a Senator from Montana would differ with the gentleman from California about their party affiliation. All of the Senators, Democrat and Republican, supported the conference report.
Mr. Speaker, I yield 3\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from Connecticut (Mrs. Johnson), the chair of the Subcommittee on Health.
{time} 1815
Mrs. JOHNSON of Connecticut. Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman for yielding me this time.
I rise in strong and enthusiastic support of H.R. 1308. We made a promise in 2001 to provide income tax relief to every working American. And indeed, extending the marriage penalty relief, extending the $1,000 tax credit per child, leaving families with more disposable income to meet the needs of their children, and extending the 10 percent bracket are important to the well-being of our families and working people in America.
But I particularly congratulate the chairman on extending crucial provisions in the Tax Code that have recently or are about to expire. Allowing the expensing of cleanup costs associated with brownfields, old, polluted, industrial sites, helps jobs to be created in our cities and is absolutely crucial to the future of economic opportunity to our city folks and to the tax base of our urban areas. Extending the work opportunities tax credit and the welfare-to-work tax credit means hard-
to-employ people, people who have spent time in jail, people who have very little education, get the work opportunity that they deserve with the training that they need. In addition, extending the R&D tax credit allows American companies to invest in risky innovations. R&D is a gamble, even for the largest companies, but it is a gamble that often results in tremendous economic reward, and it is a gamble that must be taken for any nation that hopes to have a strong economy.
Other nations have long recognized the benefits of subsidizing research and development. In a global economy where research and scientific experimentation can occur anywhere, the U.S. can ill afford to stand idle while France, Germany and other countries in Europe provide strong incentives for companies who do R&D on their soil. Indeed, other nations use tax dollars to subsidize their companies. Our European trading partners, for example, funnel billions of dollars, direct and generous loans, to their companies to develop products that compete directly with American goods. The R&D credit is about competitiveness. It is about jobs in every community across America, and it helps small and medium-sized companies as well.
According to a recent Ernst & Young report, more than 4,500 firms with assets of less than $1 million claim the credit. That is 25 percent of all firms. For the smallest firms in the study, the value of the credit, on average, was about 9.4 percent of their assets.
The R&D tax credit has a long history of bipartisan support, and while I am disappointed that the credit was not enhanced, and I will continue to press that issue to make it more accessible to start-up firms, I urge strong support for the bill.
Mr. RANGEL. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Let me make it clear and try to set the direction in which this debate is going. We do not find Democrats disputing the merits of the tax cuts. We are not even challenging the fact that Republicans have decided to do this on the eve of the election. All we are saying is that you could have given our combat people a better deal by making their extension permanent, and you certainly could have given the working poor an opportunity to enjoy this even though they make
$10,750.
The problem we have with this is the fact that you are running us
$149 billion back into the deficit when you know, and it will go unchallenged, that in the committee, in the conference, we did have the loopholes to repair this and to bring to this floor a bill that would have been paid for, that would have passed with all Democrats and all Republican votes.
Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Cardin), a Member whose career has been spent trying to protect all Americans, especially those who are struggling to become part of the mainstream.
Mr. CARDIN. Mr. Speaker, I always enjoy my distinguished chairman comparing the records of the Democrats and Republicans on major issues. Let me try to complete that a little bit more, if I might. It was the Democratic administration under President Clinton that brought our budget into balance, and it was the Republican administration that undid all of that good work.
Mr. Speaker, the Democrats support responsible tax legislation. The tax provisions in this legislation are well-targeted to extend important tax provisions that help most Americans and help our economy.
But there are two glaring flaws in the bill before us. The gentleman from California (Mr. Stark) and the gentleman from New York (Mr. Rangel) have already talked about the limited impact on low-wage families, particularly on military families. We did not do what was right as it related to the child credit for those groups of people. It certainly was not treated with equity as to what we did with the other provisions on extensions.
The second major flaw is that bill adds $150 billion to our national debt, on top of the $422 billion deficit we have in this one year.
I listened to my distinguished chairman talk about what happened in conference, the efforts made by some of my democratic colleagues to increase the extent of this bill and increase the cost of this bill. But what my distinguished chairman did not say is that the Democrats also offered in conference ways to offset some of the costs, and that was rejected by our Republican friends.
We believe that this bill should be paid for. The gentleman from California (Mr. Stark) has already given us one example of how we could pay for this bill. The Wall Street Journal today reported 82 companies, all which have benefited from these tax cuts, pay no taxes at all. We could have them pay some of these taxes.
Mr. Speaker, if we could just revisit the tax changes for the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans, we could not only pay for the entire cost of this bill, we could also help reduce our national debt and deficit.
So, Mr. Speaker, our objection is that we should be fiscally responsible. We should have paid for this bill. The underlying provisions are good and should be enacted.
Mr. THOMAS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, I have to tell my friend, the gentleman from Maryland, that the statement that the minority from the Senate offered offsets for the provisions that they offered simply is not true. They did not offer offsets. There were provisions that were offered that did not cover it. There were offers for particular portions of the bill, and there were offers to simply cut the bill in the tax credit areas to cover the cost of the new items added, and on the largest amendment offered by the minority, there was not coverage for the cost.
So the gentleman's statement that they provided offsets for the entire bill, including the amendments that they offered, if that was the intent of the gentleman's statement, simply is not accurate.
Mr. CARDIN. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
Mr. THOMAS. I yield to the gentleman from Maryland.
Mr. CARDIN. Mr. Speaker, I was under the impression that the gentleman from New York (Mr. Rangel) offered in conference to revisit the tax breaks on the upper 1 percent, and it is my understanding that that would pay for the entire cost of the bill. That is the reason why I stated that.
Mr. THOMAS. Mr. Speaker, reclaiming my time, I understand the gentleman's statement, and that was with respect to the underlying bill, but there were amendments offered which were not offset. The gentleman indicated that yes, there were increases offered, but offsets were provided as well. That statement simply is not factual.
Certainly, the gentleman from New York, who voted against the bill, provided a method which would take money away from individuals, increase their taxes, to distribute their income taxes, to distribute money to people who do not pay income taxes, but that was not on the portions that were offered by the Senators on the amendments that they offered.
I will certainly concede the underlying bill was covered by making people pay more in income tax so money could be distributed to those who do not pay income tax, but the statement that all of the amendments that were offered that increased the cost were offset is simply not a factual statement. That is the only point.
Mr. CARDIN. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman would just yield for further clarification, I appreciate that statement, and the point is that the amendment offered by the gentleman from New York (Mr. Rangel) would have covered all of those costs. I appreciate the gentleman yielding.
Mr. THOMAS. Mr. Speaker, the gentleman from Maryland also knows that, under the United States Constitution, the purse strings are controlled by Congress under article I, not the President under article II. The reason we were able to balance the budget after all of those years was that, notwithstanding the fact that the Democrats captured the White House, which does not control the purse strings, the Republicans captured the Congress, House and Senate. Those who control the purse strings control the spending. The budget was balanced because of a Republican Congress, not a Democrat President.
I would also have to tell my friends, as they review with indignation the combat pay provision included in the earned income credit, it used to be that way. But President Clinton in his administration recommended that in 2001 it be dropped. We accepted the Clinton administration recommendation, and it was dropped. We are now reinstating it. And what people need to understand is, the reason President Clinton asked us to drop it is because it was just too complex. We have figured out a way, through election, to resolve that problem. Yet, when people voted to remove it, we did not hear all of the criticism. When we decide to put it back in, in an effective way, we get criticized. It just is interesting, the process here. Even when we are trying to help people in need, we get criticized.
Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Louisiana (Mr. McCrery), a member of the Committee on Ways and Means.
Mr. McCRERY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman for yielding me this time.
Mr. Speaker, much of the substance of this bill has been repeated here on the Floor today, and I am not going to do that, but there are a couple of areas that I want to emphasize.
Before I do that, though, I want to underscore what the chairman just said about balancing the budget under President Clinton. Another way of putting it, without referring specifically to articles in the Constitution, is to say that the President proposes, the Congress disposes. That is to say, the President can recommend things to the Congress, but it is the Congress that actually votes and passes budgets and passes appropriations bills and entitlement programs and the like.
Prior to Republicans taking over the House and the Senate, President Clinton was saying that he could see deficits as far as the eye could see, over the horizon. It was only when Republicans took control of the purse strings, as the chairman put it, that we started enacting policies that increased revenues by cutting taxes and controlling spending and balancing the budget for the first time since the late 1960s. It was the Republican Congress that did that, not President Clinton. And as the chairman said, the Constitution provides that it is the Congress that disposes.
Now, the two areas that I want to emphasize in the bill, number one, the extension of expiring provisions in the Tax Code. In other words, there are some provisions in the Tax Code that have expired. They are no longer in effect, or they will expire this year. The gentlewoman from Connecticut (Mrs. Johnson) mentioned a few of those. Let me mention a few more. A deduction for computer donations, a $250 deduction for teacher classroom expenses, a tax credit for electric produced from renewable sources, such as wind energy, a very promising technology for renewable energy production. A tax credit for electric vehicles, a deduction for clean fuel vehicles; those kinds of provisions that are in the Tax Code to encourage the development of renewable sources of energy, to encourage the efficiency of energy in this country, in the use of energy in this country, would be expiring if it were not for the passage of this bill.
The second thing I want to emphasize, Mr. Speaker, is that anyone who votes no on this bill today is voting for a tax increase on the American people and on the middle class in this country, because almost all of these tax provisions go to the middle class. And if you vote no on this bill, you are saying, we are not going to renew these tax breaks for the middle class; we are going to increase taxes on the middle class. That is the bottom line on this bill.
So let us be clear: If you vote for this bill, you are voting to allow taxes on the middle class to remain low. If you vote against this bill, you are voting to increase taxes on the middle class in this country. That is it, plain as day.
Mr. STARK. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
I would just like to note, I have had this lesson in civics, and the gentleman is correct, the Congress does dispose. And in the tenure of the current chair of the Committee on Ways and Means, he has disposed of a $5.6 trillion surplus, and he now has us a $3 trillion deficit. He is throwing away $8 trillion, in his Republican leadership of the Committee on Ways and Means, and that is not so bad.
Mr. Speaker, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Washington
(Mr. McDermott), a gentleman who has seen the inside of a military uniform.
(Mr. McDERMOTT asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)
{time} 1830
Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, here we are again with one of these election-year bills. I can imagine that there are people out there watching and listening to this debate and trying to make head or tail of what is going on here today, and I intend to vote ``no.'' I was asked by one of the press, why are you going to vote ``no''? And I think that is a really good thing to discuss, because it would certainly be easy to vote ``yes.'' Everybody wants to give tax breaks.
Who in the world in an election year, 40 days before election, would not want to give away all of this money and do all of these kinds of things? But I am a child psychiatrist and one of the things you learn in raising children is that sometimes you have to say, no, we cannot do that. We cannot buy that. We cannot have that. And this Republican majority in the House and Senate really does not seem to be able to ever say no. They do not believe that you cannot spend on a credit card forever.
A credit card, I have got them in my pocket like everybody else does; you have to pay it back some time. Now, the United States right now, and the reason I do not want to borrow another $149 billion is because this is borrowed money. This is not money that anybody has paid in taxes. This is money that we are borrowing from the Chinese and the Japanese and the Saudis. We go out there selling these Treasury notes. Now, when that lapses, who controls the United States? Us or those to whom we are in debt?
If they decide to pull that money out, we go down like a rock. And you think the Chinese are really on our side? Do you think they are really friendly? You think they would not do that to us economically? We are putting ourselves in danger. The Republican majority, if they were trying to destroy this economy, could not have done a better job than they have done in the last 2 years. We thought 350 or whatever it was last year was bad. Now we have got $420 billion. That is over $700 billion that we have gone in debt, we have borrowed from the Chinese, from the Saudis, from the Europeans.
We just go and say, Please, we need money. We are the richest country in the world. We have got the biggest army and all that kind of stuff, but we need money. Please give us money so we can keep our economy going. That is not the America that I want. I think we have to have some fiscal discipline in this House, and it has to start in things like this.
Mr. THOMAS. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Arizona (Mr. Hayworth), a member of Committee on Ways and Means.
Mr. HAYWORTH. Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman of the committee for yielding me time.
Mr. Speaker, I listened with interest to my friend from Washington State not really discussing the merits of the bill, but discuss atmosphere and perception, and that is fine, as if families struggling to make ends meet are spoiled children to be indulged; as if somehow at this point in time, with 2-year terms, allowing Americans to keep more of their money is somehow ill advised or worse still, a political stunt.
Mr. Speaker, our Founders, very exceptional people, gave us 2-year terms. This is overdue, to extend opportunities. Indeed, devoid from this debate until this point, Mr. Speaker, is the acknowledgement of the fact that this country was suddenly, violently and brutally attacked on September 11, 2001. Indeed, I hear laughter from the other side, Mr. Speaker. Laughter about an attack that killed 3,000 Americans. I mention this not to wave the bloody shirt, but to talk, in essence, of what we do in this legislation.
I am sorry my friend, the ranking member, is not here who apparently is against the bill. We have authority to issue New York Liberty Zone Bonds, extend that to 2009 to rebuild Ground Zero to bring back the New York economy. We advance refunding the Liberty Zone Bonds. We have tax incentive for the District of Columbia.
We have already chronicled out, we reached out with the earned income credit for families of our combat soldiers in harm's way. And yet we hear bemused chuckles and poor analogies somehow claiming that American families keeping more of their own money are spoiled children. The contrast could not be clearer.
It is sad when those for whatever reason want to launch into diatribe or to somehow compare hard-working Americans to spoiled children, but the fact is nobody has talked about what the bill does. So apart from the election-year rhetoric and the endless class warfare diatribes and the cynical chuckles about people dying in the wake of terrorists attack, there is merit to this legislation.
Mr. Speaker, I recommend a ``yes'' vote.
Mr. STARK. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
I guess that there are people in the hall who are hearing things. Maybe they have receptors in their teeth. I heard no chuckles, but there are people who do get messages that are from strange sources; and they are certainly not in this hall.
Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Becerra).
Mr. BECERRA. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me time. As we come here to debate this, I think we should make it clear, Mr. Speaker, to everyone in this Chamber and everyone throughout America who might be watching that most of us want to see an expansion of the 10 percent tax bracket credit for all of our families because that is a tax cut that would go to all families including our lowest- or modest-
income earning families. We would like to see an extension of the
$1,000 family credit for those with children.
There are other tax proposals here that offer relief to American families which we support. That is not the issue. The issue is that today in America, America's families face a $7.384 trillion debt; and it grows by a billion a day in interest payments that we make. And so the difficulty here is that we are on a crash course to abomination.
We are not being fiscally prudent in what we propose, even though it sounds very good. I am going to borrow some information that our colleague, someone who is a fiscal hawk and someone who has been watching this for some time has said and that is the gentleman from Mississippi (Mr. Taylor). The debt is about $7.8 trillion. That debt increased $568 billion in the last 11 months of fiscal year 2004. It has increased $1.7 trillion in the 40 months since Congress passed President Bush's first budget plan on May 9, 2001. The President's own budget expects the debt to pass $8 trillion in 2005.
The debt will surpass $9 trillion in 2007. It will surpass $10 trillion in 2009. That will have to be paid by the 280 million Americans who live in this country.
Our Nation owes close to $2 trillion of that debt to foreigners including more than $680 billion owed to Japan, more than $217 billion owed to China and Hong Kong; and the government borrowed $427 billion dollars from foreign governments and investors in just the past 12 months.
All of this is actually worse than what it sounds because what I have not mentioned is every year for the last several years the Social Security system has been collecting more money than it has had to pay out to those who are beneficiaries in retirement. And that is what we consider all or know all as the Social Security trust fund surplus. Unfortunately, every single cent of the Social Security trust fund surplus has been expended, not for Social Security, not to be prepared in the future for Social Security, but for other matters.
So, Mr. Speaker, I say to my colleagues and to all Americans who might be watching, while we all wish to continue to reduce the tax burden on Americans, it should not be done at the expense of increasing the tax burden of our American families and children into the future.
Mr. THOMAS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, ``crash course to abomination?'' I mean, I understand getting carried away with rhetoric, and I agree we have to be concerned when the Federal Government spends more than it takes in. We did not do that during World War II because it was a time during which we needed to win the war. We are in the wartime situation. Prior to getting into that wartime situation, we were in surplus.
``Crash course to abomination?'' The gentleman ran off some numbers about how big the current national deficit is, or the debt. This economy earns more than $11 trillion a year. If you made an analogy to a family, the entire deficit is less than what the family makes in earnings in a year. That does not even begin to examine the assets that the family holds, usually equity in a home. Begin thinking about all the physical assets that the society owns through the government.
Do we need to worry about debt? Yes. You worry about it most often as a personal relationship to your income or productivity for countries. Today, that debt is about 3.8 percent. Back in the 1980s and 1990s when the gentleman's party was in control, it went over 6 percent. We were better than two-thirds of that percentage when the gentleman's party was in power. I didn't hear ``crash course to abomination'' then.
There is nothing wrong with pointing out the fact that you need to have a debt that is manageable. The best way to view the debt is not in the absolute numbers, but in a percentage of your ability to pay. Today that debt is about 3.8 percent. In the recent past it has been as high as 6. Do we need to be concerned about it? Yes.
Chairman Greenspan has said repeatedly in front of congressional committees, the way you control a growing debt is to reduce spending. That is the long-term procedure for getting imbalance back into balance.
The other thing that you need to remember is the gentleman from California (Mr. Stark) said that when we cut people's taxes, we just throw the money away. If you ever wanted to get a mental set of how people approach the revenues raised by government it is that when we cut taxes, we gave people back their own money. When they look at what we did, giving people back their own money, they see it as throwing money away.
Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Schrock).
Mr. SCHROCK. Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman for yielding me time.
I rise today in support of H.R. 1308, the Working Family Tax Relief Act. We must act today to preserve the relief plan that has created record-breaking economic growth and has spurred the creation of over 1.7 million jobs alone in the last year. Failure to act today will result in 93 million Americans and their families paying on average
$565 more on their taxes next year.
{time} 1845
As my colleagues heard the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Shaw) say, many of these families will be our military families, with a parent fighting somewhere in the global war on terror. Our military families are paying Uncle Sam enough just with their honorable service, and we should do everything we can to allow them to keep more of their hard-
earned money.
This tax extension has important economic impacts for all of our military families. This bill provides an additional $199 million of assistance to military families in combat zones, and my colleagues heard the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Shaw) say this bill increases the child credit for military families by allowing them to include tax-free combat pay when calculating their refundable child credit.
He also said, and as we heard the chairman say, this bill increases the earned income credit for military families in 2004 and 2005 by giving them the option to include combat pay in calculating that tax credit.
Congress must pass this bill and help extend tax relief to our very important military families.
Mr. STARK. Mr. Speaker, could I inquire as to how much time remains.
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Simpson). The gentleman from California
(Mr. Stark) has 11 minutes remaining. The gentleman from California
(Mr. Thomas) has 5\1/2\ minutes remaining.
Mr. STARK. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Andrews) for whom the complexities of a tax credit for the military would not exceed his intellect, as it obviously does the leader at the White House and the leader of the Committee on Ways and Means.
(Mr. ANDREWS asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)
Mr. ANDREWS. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend for yielding me time.
I rise in opposition to the conference report. A few minutes ago, my friend from Arizona said we should talk about what the bill does. Here is what the bill does.
It does some very desirable and popular things for taxes for families in the country, which is good; and it pays for those tax reductions by borrowing $146 billion from the Social Security trust fund and from creditors who will collect those debts from our children in the future.
Now, there was another way to do this. The other way to do this would have been to make a modest reduction in the tax cut that the people at the very top of the income scale would have gotten. We had an amendment that would have said let us just marginally reduce, somewhat reduce, the tax cut that the people at the top 2 percent or so get and let us pay for the tax cut that way and not reduce the deficit. We were not permitted a vote on that idea.
So the choice is, deliver these popular tax benefits by borrowing the money to pay for them or not deliver them. It is a difficult choice. I come down on the side of saying we cannot deliver them by borrowing the money.
I hear my friends talk about restraint of spending. Earlier this year we had an omnibus appropriations bill that spent more than $800 billion. Only 83 Members voted ``no.'' I was one of the 83 Members. That was a bad political vote because the bill had lots of things in it that people liked; but because I did not want us to borrow the money, I voted ``no.''
Tonight, we have a choice where there are all kinds of popular tax breaks for people. It is a bad political vote to vote ``no.'' I am going to vote ``no'' because we should not borrow the money to do this. People do not trust American government anymore. This is why, because we tell people that they can have everything and not pay for it. Stand for integrity and vote ``no.''
Mr. STARK. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds to speak on behalf of the gentleman from New York (Ranking Member Rangel).
I think somebody on the majority side misinterpreted the gentleman from New York's (Mr. Rangel) position. I am aware that the gentleman from New York (Mr. Rangel) intends to vote for this bill. He is unhappy with the fact that it is not paid for and that it mistreats our military and our very lowest income people, but he does intend to vote for it. I think to suggest that he is opposing the bill is a misstatement of his position, and he has asked me to set the record straight.
Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentlewoman from Ohio (Mrs. Jones).
Mrs. JONES of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I am always interested when people comment that we are returning money to people who pay the taxes. I guarantee my colleagues that the 60,000 people in Cleveland who have lost jobs since President Bush took office and the 230,000 people in Ohio who have lost jobs since President Bush took office would love to be in a position to pay taxes. In fact, they would love to be in a position where they were not just making minimum wage in exchange for some of the jobs that they have received.
It is interesting that there is always a commentary about 1 million jobs having been created since President Bush took office. If we do the math, then we understand that he is still behind maybe 1.7 million jobs.
Be that as it may, some of the provisions of this legislation are pretty good. Some of the provisions provide for research and development, and small business in Ohio and across this country would like to have those dollars.
It has some parity about mental health, and that is wonderful because people believe that parity ought to be granted to people who have insurance costs arising in mental health.
In fact, the people in my congressional district and across the country would love to be making more than $5.25 an hour so that they could pay more taxes.
I am disappointed that in this bill there was rejected a proposal that would have ensured that low-income families, the most in need, would have been eligible for a child tax credit. The 2001 law stipulated that the $10,000 threshold would rise with inflation. The problem with indexing the credit with inflation is that wages are not keeping up with inflation; and as a result, there will be lower-income families that will not be eligible for the credit next year. It is also very interesting that as a result of that, 4.3 million families will not benefit under this proposal, and there will be 9.2 million children who will not benefit under this child tax credit.
I am disappointed that the majority was not able to extend these middle-class provisions in a revenue neutral fashion. The estimated cost is $146 billion over 10 years, adding already to the $422 billion deficit. Fiscal responsibility is gone out the window, but according to the leadership, that is okay.
I just wish that we would be as fiscally irresponsible when it came time to pay for health care, as fiscally irresponsible when it came time to help pay for education, as fiscally irresponsible when it came time to pay for seniors' prescription drug benefit, as fiscally irresponsible when we start to talk about what we might do on behalf of college students.
I rise in support of these child tax credits, but I think we ought to call it like we see it, and this is what I have done.
Mr. THOMAS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
I am pleased that the gentleman from California has announced apparently on behalf of the gentleman from New York that he has Presidential aspirations. What I said was that the gentleman from New York (Mr. Rangel) voted ``no'' on the conference report. The gentleman from California stood up and said, lest there be any misunderstanding, the gentleman from New York (Mr. Rangel) proposes to vote ``yes'' on the measure, and so it is pretty obvious he has got Presidential ambitions.
The point is he voted ``no'' before he voted ``yes.'' Perhaps my colleague should have said the gentleman from New York (Mr. Rangel) will do the usual.
Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. STARK. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
It was the gentleman from Arizona, not the gentleman from California, who suggested that the gentleman from New York (Mr. Rangel) opposed the bill, and that was the misunderstanding that I wanted to correct. The chairman is correct, he did not suggest that the gentleman from New York (Mr. Rangel) was not in favor of the bill, and that was my point, to set that part of it straight.
Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Emanuel).
Mr. EMANUEL. Mr. Speaker, we are at the point where this administration has tried to finance three wars with three tax cuts, which has resulted in $450 billion in annual deficits and $3 trillion in additional debt. There is a right way to cut taxes and meet our obligations, both here at home and abroad; and then there is a wrong way.
I have strongly supported responsible tax cuts for middle-class families, but that is not what we have here. I have worked in the past on two budgets, both in 1993 and 1997 when we balanced the budget, reduced the national debt and met our obligations in the areas of education, health care, the environment, while we secured the peace in the Balkans; opposite of everything that is being done today. We can do it if we make the right choices and have a good strategy. We are not doing that here.
I find it ironic that we are handing out another $13 billion in a corporate giveaway on the very day that the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal cited studies and found that 82 of our largest and most profitable companies paid no Federal income taxes in at least one of the last three years and that corporate taxes were at their lowest sustained levels since World War II. In fact, corporate taxes have financed only 6 percent of the government expenses during the last two fiscal years at the very time that we have been sending people over to fight the war on terrorism. When we have a war going on, everybody has skin in the game. They cannot take a walk from this country and enjoy the privileges that they have to be an American.
What set of values lead my colleagues to give corporations an additional $13 billion in new giveaways at the expense of middle-class families trying to do right by their kids?
In America today, corporate balance sheets are enjoying their strongest position ever, but middle-class families are struggling with flat wages and rising health care and education costs. Yet we are providing tax breaks to the very corporations that pay no Federal income tax. Everybody must have some skin in the game when we have a war going on.
What kind of value systems say this is a good thing for corporations to avoid paying income taxes while enjoying the fruits of this country?
Mr. Speaker, the leadership is about making choices. As President Kennedy once said, to govern is to choose. My colleagues today have reflected the choices they have made on behalf of corporate America at the expense of our middle-class families.
Mr. STARK. Mr. Speaker, is the gentleman ready to close?
Mr. THOMAS. I have several speakers, but the Speaker announced the time differential.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from California (Mr. Thomas) has 4\1/2\ minutes remaining. The gentleman from California (Mr. Stark) has 3 minutes remaining.
Mr. THOMAS. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from California (Mr. Cunningham).
Mr. CUNNINGHAM. Mr. Speaker, I sit on the Committee on Appropriations; and of the 13 appropriations bills, on average there is an increase of $1.5 trillion on each of those appropriations bills. We came out with a budget, and the Democrats whine it is not enough. The President limits spending to 4 percent, and the Democrats say it is not enough. It is ironic they stand up here and talk about ``the debt.''
I have got friends on the Subcommittee on Defense, Committee on Appropriations, the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Murtha) and the gentleman from Washington (Mr. Dicks), and I have got guys like the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Skelton) and many others that support defense, but the other point for those that say, oh, defense is an issue here, well, I think for many of the people, I hope they have time to explain themselves before they die so the rest of us do not die laughing.
When my colleagues talk about the support for defense, look at the Presidential candidate that has voted across the board to cut defense and look at the progressive caucus and the rest of it. In 1993 my colleagues cut their COLAs and veterans COLAs and took every dime out.
{time} 1900
Mr. STARK. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.
Mr. Speaker, I think it is clear, or at least I might respond, that the Presidential candidate that I am going to support never ducked out of his military duty or had his daddy buy him a soft berth to avoid combat.
We are talking now about a tax bill that I suspect will pass comfortably in the next few minutes, but I think it is important again to remember that the most vulnerable of our citizens are being disadvantaged. And I am talking about those in the military.
I might add that when President Clinton did the tax credit for the military change, we had no military in Iraq.
We also are disadvantaged, hurting, raising the taxes, if you will, on 9 million of the poorest children. On the one hand, we are giving
$14 billion worth of tax breaks to corporations, when it would have only taken $4 billion of that to help the 9 million poorest children.
I do not see how any Christian or anybody with any compassion can square their conscience, can go home to dinner tonight and tell their family or their children, I just voted to harm 9 million of the poorest children in this country and I gave away $14 billion to the richest corporations in this country. That does not wash with compassion. That is underhanded and immoral and obscene, and it is part of this bill, written by the Republican chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means. And that is a fact.
There is no excuse for continuing to raise the deficit, which has been done under the leadership of the current Committee on Ways and Means, so that we have gone from a $5 trillion surplus to a $3 trillion debt. That is $8 trillion thrown away by the Republican leadership of the Committee on Ways and Means and this House, and countenanced and supported by the White House.
It is a shame that our leadership in the White House is so intellectually challenged that it cannot understand a tax credit. That in itself ought to be reason enough to change that leadership. Because by lacking the intellectual capability of understanding the Tax Code, they are harming our military.
Vote as you will, but understand the difference, Mr. Speaker, between Republican compassion and conservative giveaways to the very rich.
Mr. THOMAS. Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Portman), a very valued member of the Committee on Ways and Means, for a brief period of rationality.
Mr. PORTMAN. Mr. Speaker, that is a lot of pressure.
Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time, and I am pleased to respond to my friend, the gentleman from California (Mr. Stark), who just told us that he is predicting this will be a comfortable victory for this bill. And it will be, because it is great policy.
He talked about the fact that military families do not get help. It is just the opposite. Military families do get help under this bill. That is the whole point of the legislation, something the gentleman from New York (Mr. Rangel) has supported forever. It provides $199 million to our military families to allow them to include combat pay so they get more of an earned income tax credit; to allow them to have more help for their children. These are the people of modest income in our military who get help from this bill.
The gentleman talked about children not getting help. Well, I can certainly say that the effect on low-income families is dramatic here. We are talking about $23 billion in this bill of outlays. What does that mean? That means it goes to families who do not pay Federal income taxes, do not pay Federal income taxes at all, but yet they get an additional $23 billion through the refundable, yes, refundable, fully refundable tax credit. That is in this legislation.
Finally, the gentleman talked about the budget and deficits, and the fact we need to watch out for our deficits. Mr. Speaker, when I was first running for Congress in 1992, the deficit was 4.7 percent of our economy, which is what all economists think is critical. What is the percentage of our economy; can we pay it back or not?
Back in the 1980s, when Democrats controlled this place, about two-
thirds of the way through their 40-year reign, it was about 6.2 percent. Now it is about 3.8 percent. We just heard from CBO a few weeks ago we will actually be reducing the projection for this year by
$56 billion. OMB says it is $76 billion. The point is, despite the tax cuts from last year, there are more taxes being paid right now to the Federal Government, not less. Receipts are actually up.
Why? Because the tax cuts worked and the economy is growing. We have had the fastest growth in the last year that we have had in 20 years; not since 1984. And, yes, to my friend from Ohio, we have added 1.7, not 1, 1.7 million jobs just in the last year. This means that the tax relief works. Keeping spending under control and allowing the economy to grow is the key. This bill does it, and I strongly urge that we do have a strong vote for this bill.
Mr. THOMAS. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from California (Mr. Ose).
Mr. OSE. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time.
When I came to Congress, I came to Congress to lower taxes. I came to Congress to lower taxes because it benefits the Americans who pay taxes, and this bill goes a significant distance towards reinforcing that message.
But even if you are still inclined to vote against this bill, let me remind you that the tax rates we are setting as we deliberate on this legislation are minimums. In other words, it is a minimum rate.
Now, if you are uncomfortable with paying that minimum rate, I would encourage you to take your hard-earned cash and make a charitable contribution to the point where you are comfortable with your tax rate. And then you can turn around to your constituents as a role model and say, look what I did.
You have the opportunity, through the charitable provisions in the Tax Code, to pay as much as you wish to the United States Federal Government. We are trying to minimize it. That is what this debate is about.
Mr. THOMAS. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.
Mr. Speaker, it is often said that talk is cheap. I do hope, as we close this debate, that people listen to what people have said, but, more importantly, watch what they do when they vote. It has been announced that the ranking member of the Committee on Ways and Means voted ``no'' in conference and plans to vote ``yes'' on the floor.
We have heard a number of people criticize this bill. I would suggest that you watch their vote. What they say does not necessarily reflect what they are going to do. One is rhetoric, the other is voting.
Please vote ``yes'' on the conference report.
Mr. BLUMENAUER. Mr. Speaker, the Republican leadership in this House continues to play games with the budget. This bill contains only short-
term extensions of many important tax breaks because Congress refuses to face the long-term consequences of its actions. I support middle-
income tax relief, but families will only be better off in the long-
term if we act responsibly now.
The last 2 years have brought the largest budget deficits in our history and H.R. 1308 will add another $146 billion. New projections from the Congressional Budget Office show that the Bush administration's policies will lead to annual budget deficits in excess of $300 billion every year for the next 10 years. In other words, under the Bush administration, record deficits are here to stay.
We can do better for families and those in need by acting responsibly. Cutting taxes while at war is questionable at best. Tax cuts for the most privileged and comfortable while shortchanging education, healthcare, and our Nation's infrastructure is not responsible. Providing short-term extensions so the long-range cost of policies is hidden is not responsible. Continuing to put off a permanent fix of the Alternative Minimum Tax, which poses the most serious tax threat to middle-income families, is shameful. I oppose this legislation.
Mr. HOLT. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to express my concern about H.R. 1308. The bill before the House today extends many of the tax cuts and tax credits that have wide margins of bipartisan support here in Congress. This includes a 5-year extension of the existing $1,000 family tax credit, marriage penalty relief, and an increase in the size of the 10 percent bracket. This bill also would provide for a 1-year extension of the current Alternative Minimum Tax exemption for married couples. I support all of these credits and extensions for individuals.
There are other good provisions contained within this bill. For example, the bill extends the tax credit for electric vehicles, extends deductions for clean-fuel vehicles, and extends the Research and Development tax credit extension--which I strongly believe should be made. These targeted tax credits would help to make our air cleaner and help our nation's innovative industries achieve advances in both applied and basic research.
However, the total cost of all of this is $146 billion over 10 years and it is paid for with borrowed money. In other words it's money we do not have. What this means is that we are paying for this with money taken out of Social Security and Medicare Trust Fund.
It is disappointing that the Republican majority in this House is not willing to offset the cost of these broadly supported tax benefits. Failure to offset their cost now only means that we will borrow the money necessary and our children and grandchildren will pay for them later.
The Republican majority in this House seems capable only of passing tax reductions, not dealing with the consequences of its irresponsible fiscal policy. We could have paid for this conference report quite easily by taking back a portion of the recent tax reductions enjoyed by couples who earn more than $1 million per year--$500,000 for single individuals. Had we done that, we could have passed this tax cut and still given those at the top of the income ladder a tax cut.
Mr. Speaker, governing is about making choices. Our constituents all across America sent us to Congress to make the tough decisions. They did not send us here so we can pass those decisions on to our children, and they certainly did not send us here to pass the cost of our decisions on to our children.
Mr. Speaker, today the national debt is the largest in history. Americans now collectively owe more than $7 trillion. That is more than
$25,000 for every man, woman, and child. Yet rather than paying down this debt and getting our fiscal house in order, this bill would add an additional $146 billion to the debt.
Americans cannot run their own household budgets like this, and Congress is letting them down by its failure to manage money responsibly.
The national debt is not just paper. That debt is owned by other countries. Due to the failed fiscal management of the majority, Americans currently owe about $4 trillion to foreign countries. We owe Japan $607 billion; China--including Hong Kong--$205 billion; the U.K.
$137 billion; Taiwan, $50 billion; Germany, $45 billion; OPEC countries, $43 billion; Switzerland, $41 billion; Korea, $37 billion; Mexico, $32 billion; Luxembourg, $26 billion; Canada, $25 billion--the list goes on and on.
More tax cuts without offsets will not only jeopardize critical public services now, but they will also hurt Americans well into the future. Massive deficits crowd out investments in education, healthcare and homeland security. These deep deficits result in increased interest rates that make it expensive for all Americans to buy homes, pay back loans, and raise capital for small businesses.
I believe Chairman Greenspan's comments are appropriate: ``Our fiscal prospects are, in my judgment, a significant obstacle to long-term stability because the budget deficit is not readily subject to correction by market forces that stabilize other imbalances. The free lunch has still to be invented.'' Just this week, the Federal Reserve raised interest rates. This is proof positive that it already considers that deficit out of control.
Mr. Speaker, there has never been, and there never will be, a nation in the world that has been strong, free, and bankrupt. We need to restore fiscal sanity in our decision making process. We need to make the hard choices that our constituents sent us here to make. And most of all we need to protect the Social Security and Medicare Trust Fund, not spend them and send the check to future generations.
Ms. KILPATRICK. Mr. Speaker, I rise today in opposition to H.R. 1308. My opposition is based on principle and facts. The principle that is important to me is that the majority through this bill, will exacerbate an already enormous budget deficit by $150 billion. I am outraged and dismayed that once again, my Republican colleagues have opted to offer legislation under the guise that it will provide tax relief. In reality, this bill is really nothing more than corporate welfare.
According to recent reports, 82 of the country's largest corporations paid no Federal income taxes for at least 1 year of the Bush administration's first 3 years. In this bill, we are offering these same corporations with over $5 billion in corporate refunds.
This bill, when passed, will increase the tax burden for 4.3 million families whose combined income is less than $10,750. It will have a negative impact on 9.2 million poor children. In effect this bill either has limited positive impact or profound negative impact on low wage and military families.
At the end of the day, this bill will increase the Federal deficit by an additional $150 million on top of the current $423 billion deficit for FY 2005. H.R. 1308 will further burden my children and grandchildren with debt that they will be forced to pay for years to come.
I will vote no on this bill, and urge my colleagues to do likewise.
Mr. SAM JOHNSON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of the Working Families Tax Relief Act. When President Bush signs it into law, we will have accomplished another round of tax cuts--this one worth
$146 billion--with more than $130 billion directed to families.
Hard working American families will be able to spend or save this money based on their priorities rather than the U.S. Government spending it.
This new law will keep thousands of families from falling into the Alternative Minimum Tax system. The AMT exemption will remain at
$58,000 for married couples for 1 more year. This modest AMT relief is scored at a whopping $23 billion to extend for just 1 more year.
This huge revenue effect, for just a 1-year ``hold harmless,'' is a good indication of the looming problem of the AMT. In 2008, the AMT is going to begin collecting more than the underlying income tax system. This means that in 2008 it will be cheaper for Congress to repeal the entire Tax Code than it will be to repeal the AMT.
We will either achieve fundamental tax reform during the 109th Congress or it will be done to us when AMT imposes its version of the
``flat tax reform'' at 28 percent on millions of American families. I look forward to this debate on fundamental tax reform.
I am also pleased that we are able to take care of one additional piece of legislative ``housekeeping'' by extending some very important expiring provisions. In particular, I am glad that we are providing a seamless extension of the research and experiment tax credit and the tax rules regarding Archer Medical Saving Accounts.
It is important for American competitiveness, and particularly for my high-tech home State of Texas, that the research and experiment credit is extended. Foreign governments give generous outright subsidies to businesses for locating these high-valued-added jobs in their countries. We need to provide this modest tax break to businesses for them to remain competitive in global markets and to encourage them to keep these jobs here in America.
I urge my colleagues to support this important legislation.
Mr. GARRETT of New Jersey. Mr. Speaker, in an effort to obtain a first-hand perspective on the conditions is the newly liberated nation of Iraq, to visit with and pay tribute to our Nation's uniformed sons and daughters serving there and to share insight with officials of the newly established government, I will be leaving for Iraq tonight as part of a bipartisan congressional visit.
If I had been able to cast my vote, I would have been a proud supporter of the H.R. 1308 conference report, the All-American Tax Relief Act of 2003.
This bill will extend important tax provisions including the $1,000 per child tax credit, marriage tax relief, the expanded 10-percent income tax bracket and one year of additional relief from the alternative minimum tax (AMT).
I urge all my colleagues to support this legislation in order to prevent a tax increase on hard-working American families.
Mr. CRANE. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to give my support for H.R. 1308, the Working Families Tax Relief Act of 2004. As a member of the Ways and Means Committee, it has been my privilege to work on the development of this legislation, and I look forward to its passage today.
Mr. Speaker, if we do not pass this legislation, hard-working families will have to face tax increases over the next 10 years, totaling $109 billion. If we do not pass H.R. 1308, it will most certainly harm the economic recovery we are now enjoying in this Nation.
H.R. 1308 will further eliminate the marriage penalty for American families. Before tax relief was implemented in 2001 and 2003, the marriage penalty tax was a burden to millions of Americans being taxed more than other citizens simply because they were married.
Under our legislation, the $1,000 child tax credit rate will also be extended. If this legislation is not passed, working families will have to pay $300 more per child in taxes than they did in 2003 and 2004. Without our legislation, military families will suffer as the per-child credit for military families will be increased by allowing these families to include tax-free combat pay when calculating their refundable child credit.
President Bush's 2001 and 2003 tax relief bills also increased the Alternative Minimum Tax, AMT, exemption amounts from $45,000 to $58,000 for married couples and from $33,750 to $40,250 for single men and women. These increases ensure that the AMT does not hit middle-income families as a result of the tax relief provided in the 2001 and 2003 tax reduction laws. However, if we do not act now this relief will expire at the end of this year.
Mr. Speaker, it is important to remember that it is private citizens, not the Federal Government, that create this Nation's wealth and pay this Nation's taxes. If we do not act on this legislation, millions of America's middle-class taxpayers will suffer as a result. That is unconscionable, therefore I urge my colleagues to support this legislation.
Mr. OSBORNE. Mr. Speaker, I have supported several tax reducing measures since coming to Congress, including the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001 and Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Act of 2003. These two bills, along with a number of other measures, decreased the marriage penalty, increased the child tax credit, and delivered immediate relief to all taxpayers. Without H.R. 1308, the tax burden on a family of four earning $40,000 would increase by $915 in 2005. This legislation ensures that families will continue to enjoy the tax relief passed in 2001 and 2003 for years to come.
Unfortunately, I was not able to vote on the conference report for H.R. 1308, the All-American Tax Relief Act. Along with a number of my colleagues, I had previously scheduled a congressional delegation trip to the Middle East and Iraq. If I could have voted on H.R. 1308, I would have voted ``yea.'' However, I felt confident that my colleagues in the House share my support for extending these family-friendly provisions, preventing a tax increase of $109 billion on America's families.
Ms. HERSETH. Mr. Speaker, later today, the House will consider H.R. 1308, the Tax Relief, Simplification, and Equity Act. As you know, H.R. 1308 extends the child tax credit, provides relief from the marriage penalty and expands the 10-percent bracket for many families in South Dakota. Importantly, it also extends recent changes in the Alternative Minimum Tax. I also support provisions such as the extension of the research and development tax credit and the welfare-to-work and work opportunity tax credit.
I am leaving today with a number of my colleagues on a delegation trip to Iraq. We have attempted to schedule this trip in a way that minimizes the activity in the House that we will miss. As you know, however, getting to and from Iraq is not easy, and, unfortunately, it appears that I will miss this vote today. I want the Record to be clear that I support H.R. 1308, I would have voted for the bill, and I urge my colleagues to do the same.
As I prepare to meet with our Nation's soldiers serving in the region, it is important to note that H.R. 1308 also extends for 5 years the fix for military families for the Child Tax Credit, and a 2-year fix for families of soldiers earning combat pay, regarding the Earned Income Tax Credit. Our men and women in uniform are risking their lives under our country's flag. And it is fitting that we can provide this assistance to them. These fixes make passage of H.R. 1308 even more important, and again, I urge my colleagues to pass this important piece of legislation.
Mr. GREEN of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of this bill because of the tax relief that it provides our middle class and the incentives it provides for additional research and development.
Without hesitation, I support marriage penalty relief, the expansion of the 10-percent bracket and the extension of the AMT exemption.
I also am pleased that the conference approved extensions of the work opportunity tax credit and the welfare-to-work tax credit.
If I had my druthers, those tax credits would be permanent, but I will certainly support their extension.
While I wholeheartedly support the middle-class tax relief in this particular bill, I cannot cast my vote without also speaking out against the lopsided tax cuts that this Congress has enacted.
What convenient timing for this Congress to finally consider tax cuts for the wage earners right before the people are heading to the polls.
Any other time of the year, however, this Congress seems to be focused on giving tax relief not to the middle class, but to the corporations that seem to be doing just fine at avoiding their tax liabilities.
In fact, of the 275 largest companies that were profitable in the last 3 years, 82 of them paid no income tax during at least 1 of those years.
That's no income tax on a total of $102 billion in profits.
Not only did these companies avoid their tax liability, they siphoned even more resources from the Treasury--in the form of $12.6 billion in tax rebates.
In total, these companies benefited from $175 billion in tax breaks over the past 3 years.
Make no mistake about it, I'm glad we're giving the middle class the tax relief they need.
I just wish they didn't have to wait in line while this Congress gave away the farm to the corporations.
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Simpson). Without objection, the previous question is ordered on the conference report.
There was no objection.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The question is on the conference report.
The question was taken; and the Speaker pro tempore announced that the ayes appeared to have it.
Recorded Vote
Mr. STARK. Mr. Speaker, I demand a recorded vote.
A recorded vote was ordered.
The vote was taken by electronic device, and there were--ayes 339, noes 65, not voting 30, as follows:
AYES--339
AbercrombieAckermanAderholtAkinAlexanderAllenBacaBachusBairdBakerBaldwinBallengerBarrett (SC)Bartlett (MD)Barton (TX)BassBeauprezBellBerkleyBermanBiggertBilirakisBishop (NY)Bishop (UT)BlackburnBluntBoehlertBoehnerBonillaBonoBoozmanBoswellBoucherBoydBradley (NH)Brady (TX)Brown (OH)Brown (SC)Brown-Waite, GinnyBurgessBurnsBurrBurton (IN)ButterfieldBuyerCalvertCampCantorCapitoCardinCardozaCarson (IN)Carson (OK)CarterCaseCastleChabotChandlerChocolaClyburnCobleColeCostelloCoxCramerCraneCrenshawCrowleyCubinCulbersonCummingsCunninghamDavis (AL)Davis (CA)Davis (FL)Davis (TN)Davis, Jo AnnDavis, TomDeFazioDeLayDeMintDeutschDiaz-Balart, L. Diaz-Balart, M.DingellDooley (CA)DoolittleDreierDuncanDunnEdwardsEhlersEmersonEngelEnglishEshooEtheridgeEvansEverettFarrFeeneyFergusonFilnerFlakeFoleyForbesFordFossellaFranks (AZ)FrelinghuysenFrostGalleglyGephardtGerlachGibbonsGilchrestGillmorGingreyGonzalezGoodeGoodlatteGordonGrangerGreen (WI)GreenwoodGrijalvaGutknechtHallHarrisHartHastertHastings (WA)HayesHayworthHefleyHensarlingHergerHincheyHinojosaHobsonHoeffelHoekstraHoldenHondaHooley (OR)HostettlerHoughtonHulshofHunterHydeIsaksonIsraelIssaJackson-Lee (TX)JeffersonJenkinsJohnJohnson (CT)Johnson (IL)Johnson, E. B.Johnson, SamJones (NC)Jones (OH)KapturKellerKellyKennedy (MN)Kennedy (RI)KildeeKindKing (IA)King (NY)KingstonKirkKlineKnollenbergKolbeKucinichLaHoodLampsonLangevinLantosLathamLaTouretteLeachLevinLewis (CA)Lewis (KY)LinderLoBiondoLofgrenLoweyLucas (OK)LynchMajetteManzulloMarshallMathesonMatsuiMcCarthy (NY)McCotterMcCreryMcGovernMcHughMcInnisMcIntyreMcKeonMcNultyMeek (FL)Meeks (NY)MicaMichaudMiller (MI)Miller (NC)Miller, GaryMooreMoran (KS)Moran (VA)MurphyMusgraveNadlerNapolitanoNethercuttNeugebauerNeyNorthupNorwoodNussleOrtizOseOtterOxleyPascrellPaulPearcePencePeterson (MN)Peterson (PA)PetriPickeringPittsPlattsPomboPomeroyPorterPortmanPrice (NC)Pryce (OH)PutnamRadanovichRahallRamstadRangelRegulaRehbergRenziReyesReynoldsRogers (AL)Rogers (KY)Rogers (MI)RohrabacherRos-LehtinenRossRothmanRoybal-AllardRoyceRuppersbergerRyan (OH)Ryan (WI)Ryun (KS)Sanchez, Linda T.Sanchez, LorettaSandersSandlinSaxtonSchiffSchrockScott (GA)SensenbrennerSerranoSessionsShadeggShawShaysShermanSherwoodShimkusShusterSimmonsSimpsonSkeltonSlaughterSmith (MI)Smith (NJ)Smith (TX)SnyderSolisSouderSprattStearnsStenholmStricklandStupakSullivanSweeneyTancredoTauscherTaylor (NC)TerryThomasThornberryTiahrtTiberiToomeyTurner (OH)Turner (TX)Udall (NM)UptonVan HollenVelazquezWalden (OR)WalshWampWattWeinerWeldon (FL)Weldon (PA)WellerWexlerWhitfieldWickerWilson (NM)Wilson (SC)WolfWuWynnYoung (AK)Young (FL)
NOES--65
AndrewsBecerraBerryBlumenauerBrady (PA)Brown, CorrineCappsCapuanoClayConyersCooperDavis (IL)DeGetteDeLauroDicksDoyleEmanuelFrank (MA)GutierrezHarmanHastings (FL)HillHoltHoyerInsleeJackson (IL)KanjorskiKilpatrickLarsen (WA)Larson (CT)LeeLewis (GA)MarkeyMcCollumMcDermottMeehanMenendezMillender-McDonaldMiller, GeorgeMollohanMurthaNeal (MA)OberstarObeyOlverOwensPallonePastorPaynePelosiRushSaboSchakowskyScott (VA)StarkTannerTaylor (MS)Thompson (CA)TierneyTownsViscloskyWatersWatsonWaxmanWoolsey
NOT VOTING--30
Bishop (GA)BonnerCannonCollinsDeal (GA)DelahuntDoggettFattahGarrett (NJ)GossGravesGreen (TX)HersethIstookKleczkaLipinskiLucas (KY)MaloneyMcCarthy (MO)Miller (FL)MyrickNunesOsborneQuinnRodriguezSmith (WA)TauzinThompson (MS)Udall (CO)Vitter
Announcement by the Speaker Pro Tempore
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Simpson) (during the vote). Members are advised 2 minutes remain in this vote.
{time} 1929
Mr. TOWNS changed his vote from ``aye'' to ``no.''
So the conference report was agreed to.
The result of the vote was announced as above recorded.
A motion to reconsider was laid on the table.
Stated for:
Ms. McCARTHY of Missouri. Mr. Speaker, during rollcall vote No. 472, H.R. 1308, Extension of Tax Cuts Conference Report, Final Passage, I was unavoidably detained. Had I been present, I would have voted
``aye.''
Mrs. MALONEY. Mr. Speaker, on rollcall No. 472, I was unavoidably detained. Had I been present, I would have voted ``aye.''
Mr. ISTOOK. Mr. Speaker, I was unavoidably absent from voting on the Conference Report on H.R. 1308, the All-American Tax Relief Act of 2003. This bill represents important tax savings to our hard working American citizens. Had I been present, I would have voted ``aye'' on this bill.
____________________
