David Obey: “I am going to urge the House to vote for this motion to instruct. It simply says we ought to drop the tax cuts for the…”

“I am going to urge the House to vote for this motion to instruct. It simply says we ought to drop the tax cuts for the rich in the House bill and drop the tax hikes in the Senate bill on the working poor because of the changes in the earned income tax credit. It simply says: ``Don't make war on education, don't make war on Medicare, in order to give the wealthy and the super-rich another big tax cut.'' The Federal Reserve has done a new study which has shown what has happened to the Nation's wealth during most of the eighties. It showed that the richest one-half million families, who in 1983 had 24 percent of the Nation's wealth and had $2.5 trillion in wealth, had their wealth doubled to $5 trillion over a 6 year period in the eighties alone, and that their share of the Nation's total wealth went up from 24 to 31 percent. That means that the richest one-half million families in this country saw their net worths increase by two-and-a-half times as much as the public debt went up during that same period. That increase came because the profitability of their business holdings exploded at the expense of their workers. During the same period that workers' productivity went up by 15 percent, their wages went down by 10 percent, and that gap between increased productivity and lower wages went right into the pockets of the economic elite of this country. That is the same elite that asked us to pass NAFTA; it is the same elite that asked to pass GATT.”