Cry Uncle

CRY UNCLE

Mr. DURBIN. I accept the Senator's invitation for comment. I can remember a comment made to me, even as I stand here. The CEO of a Fortune 500 corporation in Chicago, when I visited him and said: Do you believe the President's approach, tax breaks for the highest income categories, is the right way to stimulate this economy? He said: Of course not; we have to create demand for goods and services.

He told me: I am not very popular in my country club.

Here is what I told him. Throughout history, millions of Americans have sacrificed; they have given their lives to make this a great Nation. Is it too much to ask the wealthiest people in this country to pay their fair share of taxes? I do not think it is too much. These are people who have been blessed with creativity, skill, energy, and success, and to say they are the ones we are going to continue to reward defies any logic. Why are we not trying to reward and help the struggling families who are trying to pay their basic bills?

Take a look at this chart. In terms of the Bush tax cut, the benefit for those making about $40,000 a year is $265, but if you happen to be a millionaire—$1 million of annual income—the Bush tax cut is worth almost $89,000.

PAUL SARBANES was right—and I am going to credit him for this only one time and never again—the Bush tax cut is clearly a policy of leave no millionaire behind.

Mrs. BOXER. Every year?

Mr. DURBIN. Every year this is what it comes down to. Frankly, this is the average annual tax cut for millionaires, an annual tax cut of $89,000.

What does the President cut to provide these tax cuts? Money for schools. Under his program, the education legislation, No Child Left Behind, the schools have all the mandates for testing, for evaluation, and for improvement, but the President will not put the money on the table. This is a President who posed for those holy pictures with the leaders in education in Congress, saying he was the education President, and yet when Mitch Daniels and OMB had a chance to write a budget, they did not put the money there. It is an unfunded mandate to the States when the States are desperately in trouble. The President cannot find the money to fund education, to fund his bill, but he can find money for a tax cut for the wealthiest people in America. He has abandoned No Child Left Behind so he can embrace a tax policy of no millionaire left behind, and that to me is unforgivable.

That is the difference in the approach between the two parties, and that is the difference we need to dramatize as we talk about tax policy and spending policy in this Congress.