John W. Olver: “In just a couple of weeks we are going to be beginning debate on the cornerstone of the Republican Contract on America…”

“In just a couple of weeks we are going to be beginning debate on the cornerstone of the Republican Contract on America, and that is a tax cut of $200 billion over 5 years. Never mind that those tax cuts are going to add to the deficit, never mind that these tax cuts make balancing the budget harder. But let us examine what these tax cuts actually do. In this first chart that I have here, this chart shows who benefits from the tax cuts. If you look at this, 50 percent of the tax cuts go to 10 percent of the families, with over $100,000 of income per year-- 50 percent of the cuts to 10 percent of families. At the lower end, the first two categories, which represent 71 million families or two-thirds of all families in the United States, they get less than 20 percent of the tax cuts. Families with more than $200,000 per year of income would get, on average, $5,000 of tax reduction. And 49 million families, about 45 percent of all Americans, that have under $30,000 of income per year, they would get on average $57 a year, or about $1 per week would be their share of this tax cut.”