Pete Stark: “I would just like to correct, if I may, the chairman's assertions. He has suggested that the Senate's relief is more…”

“I would just like to correct, if I may, the chairman's assertions. He has suggested that the Senate's relief is more focused at the rich, and that is not true. It is true that both the House and the Senate would give about 90 percent of their benefits to the top 20 percent, but at the very high end, the difference is amazing. More than half of the House's capital gain and dividend tax cut goes to the best 1 percent of taxpayers, and that 1 percent, those people earning more than $1.2 million a year would receive an average reduction of $26,500 apiece. That is where half of the Republican House bill goes. The Senate's bill, on the other hand, would give the AMT relief, would give that same 1 percent merely 2.5 percent of their AMT relief, or an average of $600 apiece. The other thing that is missing, and I do not suppose it is untrue to say things are missing, you cannot find weapons of mass destruction, did we lie about the war, I do not know, but to look at the fact that the Senate has paid for a good bit of their relief, and if we look at the subsequent 5 years, it is true in the first 5 years the House bill loses $56 billion, and the Senate loses $57 billion, but that is only the tip of the iceberg because in the second 5 years the Senate bill picks up $20 billion because it has not recklessly given away revenue through reduction of capital gains and dividend income. The House, on the other hand, in the second 5 years loses another $30 billion.…”