Barney Frank: “I will, though, have to say that the refusal of the Republican leadership in the House to allow the House to vote on a…”

“I will, though, have to say that the refusal of the Republican leadership in the House to allow the House to vote on a proposal that would extend to hard-working, low-income people financial relief after all of the financial relief we have given to people in the upper brackets is truly distressing. I know there has been an effort on the House floor to portray our interest in providing a tax credit to people, and let us be clear, we are talking about here people who work. They work very hard. They work at jobs that are not very pleasant, and that, by definition, are not well paid. Many of them have families. It is true that because they work hard at jobs that this society has devalued in many cases they do not pay much or any income tax. They do, however, pay a significant percentage of their income in taxes. They pay the Social Security tax and the tax on Medicare. They pay the withholding tax. For many of them because there are no exemptions from that, there are no deductions, they pay the full thing no matter how many children they have, no matter how many other expenses they have.”