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“THE EFFECTS OF PASSING H.R. 2, JOBS AND GROWTH TAX ACT OF 2003” mentioning the U.S. Dept. of Commerce was published in the House of Representatives section on pages H3958-H3959 on May 9, 2003.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
THE EFFECTS OF PASSING H.R. 2, JOBS AND GROWTH TAX ACT OF 2003
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the gentleman from Washington (Mr. McDermott) is recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. McDERMOTT. Mr. Speaker, today we passed a bill out of here in an hour that spent $550 billion worth of taxes. The fact that the House of Representatives, which is the body charged by the Constitution with the responsibility of originating all tax policy in this country, that we can deal with a bill of that size with 1 hour's debate is an absolute travesty. The Founders of this country never considered that a bill of that magnitude with those kinds of long-range effects would be considered on the back of galloping horses as we run to the airport to catch planes all over the country.
The theory of this bill is that if we give back taxes, somehow we will give it to people who will then invest it, creating jobs that will lead to employment in this country. We will hear over and over and over again we are going to create a million jobs, and all this kind of stuff. But the fact is that the Department of Commerce says that today our industries in this country are operating at 75 percent capacity. That means that they can make 25 percent more of whatever it is they make whether it is shirts or tables or furniture or automobiles. They have already the capacity to produce more goods.
What is not happening is that there are people there who have money to purchase those things. So the concept that we are going to give more to the people running the factory and that some factory owner is so stupid that he has already put out all of whatever he can make and thinks he can sell that he would now make more, he would get more machinery and open up a new building and make more automobiles or more whatever, it simply does not pass the commonsense test. If someone runs a bakery and they make 10 loaves of bread and their ovens will allow them to make 20 loaves of bread, but they only sell seven loaves of bread, why would they make 20 loaves of bread? Why would they hire another baker, buy more flour and more yeast and make more bread? So this theory that suddenly if we give more money to the people at the top will magically create jobs is absolutely nonsense. What is needed, obviously, is for the people at the bottom who buy things to have more money.
The bill we just passed out of here in an hour gave 80 percent of the benefit to people making more than $75,000 a year. Now, $75,000 a year is a pretty good income. One can do quite a bit with $75,000 a year. But do all the people above it need more? Do they need to take 80 percent of the benefit and 20 percent goes to the people below? If one is a millionaire under that bill, they will get $105,000 tax refund,
$105,000. What will these people on the bottom get? $325.
Most people buy what they can afford, and if they have a small income, they sometimes cannot afford things so they do not buy them. When they have got a big income, they can do whatever they want. But this bill says these people over here with all the money, we are going to give them more, and these people over here, we are going to give them $325.
There are many ways we could have written this bill. I had a proposal to give a payroll tax holiday. There were other proposals that were out here. But the point is that we needed a bill that was fair, that gave the money to the people at the bottom. I was prepared to give a $1,400 amount to everybody in the whole society because everybody pays the payroll tax. Everybody pays Social Security. Everybody pays Medicare, and if we gave that back to people on the first $20,000 of their income, the people on the bottom would get about $1,500 in refund. They could spend it to buy an extra shirt, to take their family to dinner, to do many of the things that would keep the small businesses open that are now closing because nobody can come and buy dinner for their family. They have to stay at home and live within a tight budget. But the leadership of this House for some reason did not want us to deal with that. They would not let us deal with unemployment. None of the people at the bottom got anything. That is a sad day for this House.
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