Bill Archer: “The gentlewoman has commented that our tax bill would shower benefits on the rich and yet, interestingly enough, 93…”

“The gentlewoman has commented that our tax bill would shower benefits on the rich and yet, interestingly enough, 93 percent of the tax relief in our bill goes to taxpayers who have under $100,000 in expanded income, not just AGI, but expanded income. Where does this number come from? This number comes from the Joint Committee on Taxation, which is a nonpartisan, professional organization that advises both the Democrats and the Republicans in the Senate and in the House. Where do the figures come from in the gentleman's chart? They come from the Treasury's analysis, which is an arm of the President. The Treasury's analysis makes you rich because it arbitrarily assigns to you the imputed value, rental value, of a house that you own, and says you get income off of it every year. Now, no American would believe that. No American who is a homeowner would say, ``Gee, I'm rich because I get rental value on the house that I live in.'' They also assign an arbitrary figure of ``we know you haven't declared certain income, so we're going to arbitrarily increase your income by an amount that we think is appropriate.'' They put middle-income taxpayers into a rich category and then they say these benefits that go to middle-income taxpayers actually are going to the rich. The American people will not accept that.”