Steny Hoyer: “working Americans are in need of tax relief. They are also in need of their country balancing its budget. The Republican…”

“working Americans are in need of tax relief. They are also in need of their country balancing its budget. The Republican bill fails average, hard-working Americans on both counts. Al Hunt of the Wall Street Journal says of the Gingrich-Archer plan that it is, and I quote, ``a bonanza for the affluent, crumbs for the working class, and eventually costly.'' In fact, it will likely cost over $600 billion in the second 10-year period from 2008 through 2017. The capital gains, IRA, and estate tax provisions alone are more expensive in the year 2007 than they are in the entire first 5 years. Look at this chart. On the far right here is the first 5 years of their tax cut where, lo and behold, the capital gains brings us money. That is the bait. The switch, in 2007 alone the capital gains explode into the loss of revenue. Who is going to pay for that? Last weekend's NBC-Wall Street Journal poll said that two-thirds of Americans reject the Republicans' bonanza for the affluent and support the Democratic tax cut for mainstream working Americans who need relief from the burden they bear from income taxes but also, as the chairman surely knows, those half of Americans who pay more in FICA than they do in income taxes.…”