Jeff Duncan: “the national media has created some very false impressions about the tax cut legislation passed by the House. First, the…”

“the national media has created some very false impressions about the tax cut legislation passed by the House. First, the tax cut amounts to less than 30 percent of the projected surpluses over the 10-year period of the bill. Second, in separate legislation, we have set aside more than 70 percent of the surpluses to help pay down the national debt and in a lockbox to meet future needs of Social Security and Medicare. Third, we added language that says that tax cuts will not kick in if the surpluses do not come in as projected. Fourth, this is a tax cut spread over 10 years, with the cuts during the first 5 years amounting to only 1 rac{1}{2} ext{ percent of Federal revenues over that period. The tax cuts are very moderate, and the Republicans in the House have set aside more than 70 percent of the future surpluses for debt reduction, Social Security, and Medicare. Mr. Speaker, the average taxpayer pays almost 40 percent of his or her income in taxes now and another 10 percent in government regulatory costs that are passed on to the consumer in the form of higher prices. One-half of everybody's income is too much. Let us give a little bit of it back.”