On the recordAugust 1, 2012
It's very important everyone understand the choice that's facing the House today. The Democrats will offer an amendment that will immediately extend tax relief to 100 percent of American people. The Senate has already passed that proposal; and if our Republican colleagues vote for it today, we can send it down to the White House, the President will sign it today. Someone asked what we're going to do today. We could provide immediate tax relief to 98 percent of the American people. Now, let's be clear. The Democratic proposal provides tax relief to everybody up to $250,000. What our Republican colleagues are saying is they will deny tax relief to 98 percent of the American people, unless people making over $250,000 get a bonus, an extra tax cut. In other words, unless the top 2 percent get an extra tax cut, nobody else gets anything. It gets worse. We've heard a lot of talk here about small businesses, that we need to adopt the Republican plan in order to support small businesses. It's just not true. The Democratic proposal, according to the nonpartisan Independent Joint Tax Committee, provides tax relief to 97 percent of the businesses that we're talking about here. In fact, they point out that the other 3 percent of businesses include about 20,000 pass-through businesses that make over $50 million a year. Now, they may be good businesses, but these are not mom-and-pop businesses.…
