Martin Sabo: “here we go again. Once more we have a major piece of legislation before us, and the Republican majority has structured a…”

“here we go again. Once more we have a major piece of legislation before us, and the Republican majority has structured a rule to get around all kinds of serious Budget Act problems. The reason we have a Budget Act is to help us think through legislation before we pass it. Yet this is the eighth time this year we have been asked by the new majority to ignore the Budget Act. The tax before us is a good example of the unwise legislation the House has recently been passing. The measure actually makes the long-term deficit worse since the cost of these tax cuts grow far more quickly than the spending cuts. By the year 2000, according to CBO, the deficit under the bill will be $12 billion higher than it would be if we simply did nothing. Further, it contains some serious provisions that were never passed or considered by the appropriate committees. One of these provisions is a dangerous new taxpayer debt buydown plan. This proposal lets taxpayers designate a portion of their tax liability for debt reduction, thereby taking decisions about Federal spending from the people's elected representatives and handing them over to the wealthy. Essentially it says that the fundamental nature of the Federal Government should be changed from a representative democracy, one person one vote, to a plutocracy, one dollar one vote, a million dollars a million votes. Mr. Speaker, I cannot think of any more invidious scheme for us to include in a tax package.…”