Paul Coverdell: “my amendment is the middle-class tax relief proposal. It calls on the Government to cut nondefense discretionary…”

“my amendment is the middle-class tax relief proposal. It calls on the Government to cut nondefense discretionary spending by 6.9 percent over the next 5 years. It would return discretionary spending to a level of 1996. That does not seem too distant a reach for us. It would produce $200 billion in new tax relief to American workers and it would do it by taking 10 million American taxpayers who, simply because they now make over $25,000 a year, have had their taxes increased from 15 percent to 28 percent. In other words, if they got a single raise, or because of inflation, that has taken these very modest income families and doubled their taxes. So we are saying we are going to lift the bar and we are going to allow those families, 10 million of them, to be pushed back down into the 15 percent tax bracket, remembering that American workers today are keeping less than half their paychecks by the time the Government romps through their checking account. No wonder we have so much trouble in our country in terms of families trying to make ends meet. We don't leave them enough resources to do the job we have always asked them to do. This is a major step to correct that problem.”