Rich Neal: “we meet once again to debate the tax cut de jour. Some of the proposals the Republicans have insisted on are strictly…”

“we meet once again to debate the tax cut de jour. Some of the proposals the Republicans have insisted on are strictly for the very wealthy, like the estate tax repeal. Some are spread out more evenly, like the telephone excise tax repeal. Some manage to do a certain amount of harm and a certain amount of good, like the pension bill. But the bill that is in front of us today does real harm to the Medicare trust fund. But all of this legislation is aimed at the November elections. Let us acknowledge one thing clearly today. The Republicans never liked Medicare to begin with. They certainly did not like Social Security. That is what they attempt to do with this line of reasoning of legislation today. It is to weaken the Medicare trust fund. Under current law, the revenue generated from this tax that is being repealed goes into the Medicare trust fund. So, in effect, all citizens benefit from current law. Eighty percent of the senior citizens will not get anything from this legislation, and 20 percent of the well-off senior citizens will. Mr. Speaker, I ask my colleagues to ask themselves one question: Is this a good trade-off? If it was such a good trade-off, why did they not do it 6 years ago when they took control of this institution? Why was it not proposed 3 years ago when we had the first major tax bill passed into law? The reason is that this proposal does not look good when massive deficits are staring one in the face.”