Taxes

Floor Speech

TAXES

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Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, more than 1 month ago, I spoke on the floor regarding the need for the Senate to confirm Jim Nussle as the head of the Office of Management and Budget and about my constituents' concerns that are regularly voiced to me about the runaway Federal spending in Washington, DC, and its impact on their ability to earn a living or run a business, and their concern about the direction of the economy for the future if the Federal Government continues to occupy more and more space when it comes to their hard-earned tax dollars.

I mentioned my fear that the tax-and-spend season was upon us here in Washington, DC, and there seemed to be some early indications that some of the progress we have made as a result of progrowth, low-tax policies was going to be reversed under the new management in Washington.

In my State of Texas, to give you a snapshot, unemployment is near its lowest level in 30 years, while more than a quarter of a million new jobs have been created over the past year. That is out of the 8.3 million new jobs created in this economy since August of 2003. Instead of talking about how we can preserve these hard-won gains for the American people and my constituents back home in Texas, we hear more and more talk about raising taxes and expanding the size of the Federal Government. Instead of talking about how can we help support and nurture the entrepreneurial spirit in America, we are hearing more folks talking about how can we grow the bureaucracy and Federal programs and the size of the Federal Government.

Unfortunately, we are beginning to see a trend when it comes to raising taxes. Yesterday's suggestion by some members of the House is a disturbing example of that. Yesterday, the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee unveiled a proposal that would require taxpayers to add anywhere from 2 percent to a 15-percent surcharge to their income tax bill.

In the Senate, the majority leader declared that nothing should be off the table. I am glad to see that the Speaker of the House of Representatives quickly voiced her disagreement with this tax surcharge proposed by Congressman Obey. His proposal would amount to an annual tax increase of $150 billion a year, or three-quarters of a trillion dollars over the next 5 years--a bad idea, in my view.

At the same time, with this chart, I will document some of the proposals that have been made, because it helps to see them in one place and add them up because you only then begin to understand the full impact of these discrete proposals that are being made, all of which would result in increased taxes.

First, the budget that was passed earlier this year, of course, is where the Federal Government says how much it intends to spend and where that money is supposed to come from.

The disturbing thing to me was that it contemplated the spending levels in that budget that passed--without my support, by the way--contemplated an increase of $916 billion in additional revenue. The problem is, my concern is, frankly, that the revenue they are talking about--in other words, increased tax revenue--would come from not making the tax relief we passed in 2001 and 2003 permanent. In other words, it would result in a huge tax increase if allowed to go into effect without actually having Congress vote on increasing taxes by the mere expiration of those taxes.

Then there are some who say we want to tax the rich and don't worry about it because we are only going to tax the rich. I ask how many times we have heard that before. The alternative minimum tax is the latest example. We know that from roughly 4 million taxpayers who will be hit by this so-called alternative minimum tax this year. According to the Wall Street Journal, that number in 2007 could soar to 23 million Americans, from 4 million to 23 million Americans. In other words, the tendency all too often of the Federal Government is once a tax is created to see that tax expand and grow and to gobble up more and more taxpayers' dollars.

Certainly, that is the case where we see new Government programs created to provide for a larger and larger Government which, of course, has to be paid for, and guess where that money comes from. It comes from the beleaguered American taxpayers.

In a counterintuitive mood, this second provision of $70 billion, actually rather than tax the rich, what my colleagues on the other side of the aisle who recently voted for this new State children's health insurance expansion of 140 percent over the current program, they have actually targeted a regressive tobacco tax to fund expansion of Washington-run health care.

The President has vetoed the so-called SCHIP bill not because any of us disagree about the core mission of the SCHIP program, which is to provide health coverage for low-income kids, but the fact is that program has been hijacked and used as a Trojan horse to take an additional step, a huge incremental step toward a Washington-run health care system, which I believe is bad for the American people.

Three things one can say about Washington-controlled health care: No. 1 is, free health care isn't free because it is going to have to be paid for by the American people. No. 2, we can say Washington-controlled health care will be inevitably bureaucratic and some bureaucrat will be deciding what kind of health care you get and what kind of health care you don't get. And No. 3, we can be assured the way the Federal Government will control cost, to the extent it can, in this new program will be as a result of rationing and deciding who gets access to care and who does not, and that means more care programs, as we see currently underway in Canada, where people have to wait months and years for the kind of diagnostic care and treatment they get in a matter of days in America.

The third item, $11.4 billion, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have proposed a massive increase on energy producers in the United States. We recently had a so-called Energy bill on the floor. The only thing was it didn't produce one drop of additional energy. What we saw happen was a proposal that actually would have increased taxes on domestic energy producers which would have made us more dependent on imported energy, something we have all said is a bad idea. We know it is a bad idea for us to be as dependent as we are on imported energy. So why in the world would we want to raise taxes and increase the burden on domestic producers in a way that would make us more dependent on that imported energy?

We see there are additional proposals about which we have heard: $6.1 billion in additional taxes on oil produced in the Gulf of Mexico, additional taxes on investing and creating jobs in America by foreign businesses that want to invest in the United States, that we benefit from, that actually creates jobs here, but our friends on the other side of the aisle have proposed an increased tax on that as well. We can see the other proposals that have been made.

This is a disturbing chart, at least to me. When we look at the cost for the average American taxpayer and how many days a week they have to work to pay their Federal taxes, that will invariably go up. Right now, American taxpayers have to work 79 days out of the 365 days in the year to pay Uncle Sam, to pay their taxes. That is more than 1 out of every 5 days of the year, and that is more than the average that taxpayers will spend on food, housing, health care or any other category.

Of course, working parents face challenges every day when it comes to making sure their children get what they need and deserve in terms of health care and education. So why would Congress continue to increase and add to their burden by increasing taxes?

I ask: Is this how Washington should be working for the American taxpayer? To me the answer is clearly no. We should not force American citizens to work even more days each year for Uncle Sam. I am sad to say, disappointed to say that the tax-and-spend season is indeed upon us in Washington, DC.

Our country faces a number of challenges when it comes to the war on terror, making health care more accessible to more Americans, and making sure we remain competitive in a global economy. But it seems that every day that passes, some spend their time thinking about more ways to raise taxes and grow the size of Government. I wish we would reconsider and not do that.

I yield the floor.

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