Pete Stark: “it would be difficult today to suggest that American families in general do not deserve tax relief, and those who pay…”

“it would be difficult today to suggest that American families in general do not deserve tax relief, and those who pay taxes, mostly the middle and lower income working people, certainly feel that it is a burden and they are going to feel it as they run around trying to find the money today to pay their taxes. It is a fact that our taxes are lower, our Federal income tax, than any other developed nation in the world. It is also a fact that it is probably more unfairly distributed, with the very wealthy in this country paying nowhere near their fair share of the burden of supporting this country, which goes, interestingly enough, disproportionately to benefit the rich, who pay the least. Now, if in fact there is some relief, perhaps what it ought to be is relief from the unfair structure which has allowed corporations to escape paying much, if any, tax, which has allowed the very rich in this country to escape from paying much, if any, tax, and the taxes go into a system which now leaves us with 10 million uninsured children, 43 million uninsured Americans without health care insurance. We are the only developed nation in the world that treats our people in the health care system so poorly. Yet we have a low tax system, and it is disproportionately the low-income people who are uninsured and whose children are uninsured. So relief is in the eye of the beholder.”