Appointment of Conferees on H.R. 4297, Tax Relief Extension Reconciliation Act of 2005

APPOINTMENT OF CONFEREES ON H.R. 4297, TAX RELIEF EXTENSION RECONCILIATION ACT OF 2005 -- (House of Representatives - February 08, 2006)

02/08/06

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time.

A budget is indeed about choices about picking winners and losers. And there is a certain consistency in the approach that we have seen in this Republican Congress.

Each year this administration targets the same losers and rewards the same winners. Each year it offers more tax breaks for those at the top, the wealthiest few, and it insists that the deficits that are thereby created be paid for in part by cutting aid to working families, to students and to our seniors. Each year it sacrifices long-term fiscal responsibility at the altar of short-term political gratification, escalating the national debt to subsidize private fortunes.

The administration's budget does not just crunch numbers, however, it crunches people.

Only last week the same folks that are here today demanding more and more tax breaks for those at the very top were here saying they had billions in what they called ``savings'' to help finance these tax cuts. But if you were a family caring for an abused and neglected child, that savings meant no support.

If you were a single mom relying on Federal child support enforcement to get a deadbeat dad to pay their monthly child support payments, it meant no child support.

For many a student relying on Federal student financial assistance, it meant an inability to get aid to go to school. And the health cuts, the same burdens imposed on the most vulnerable.

This Republican-controlled Congress continues to make these cuts to the vulnerable while offering high tax cuts for million-dollar-a-year-income folks. Extending these tax breaks today will put over $32,000 in the hands of people who earn a million dollars or more every year. While true that some of the 64 percent of families who earn less than $50,000 a year will get a tax cut, too, it will amount to only about $11 a year. So it is the difference between giving a new car to some of the privileged few and a car wash to the 64 percent.

The difference that they propose today is the difference between tuition at some fancy private school to the few, but only a pack of pencils to the many. It is the difference between a down payment on another vacation villa for the wealthy and some Lincoln logs or Legos for most everyone else.

At the very moment we are now debating this, the Office of Management and Budget is over here at the Capitol whacking away again at what they claim are unnecessary programs. But there are more programs that they propose to eliminate or significantly reduce in the Education Department than in any other department in the Federal government. Such unfortunate actions by the Republicans create another kind of deficit, an ``opportunity deficit,'' where young people and some not so young are not able to obtain the resources needed to achieve their full, God-given potential.

I think it is wrong to add to that opportunity deficit in our communities, just as it is wrong to build a national deficit that those future generations will be asked to pay. There is no balance in the budget these folks are offering to us today, and there is no equity either. It ought to be rejected.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

http://thomas.loc.gov