Joe Barton

Mr. BARTON of Texas

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Before I recognize another gentleman, I would like to ask the gentleman a question: My understanding is you do represent the great State of Arkansas.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. I want to compliment the gentleman from Arizona on his leadership. He is one of the named sponsors, and is doing an outstanding job. I would like to yield to the gentleman from Arkansas [Mr. Hutchinson] at this point in time.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Before I start my special order, I want to commend the gentleman from Colorado and the gentleman from Virginia for yielding time in this special order and once we give our opening statements we will be happy to reciprocate in the spirit and to the level that you did in your special order. Mr. Speaker and members of the House, we are engaged in a serious debate. It is serious business to determine you should amend the Constitution of the United States. I would point out our Founding Fathers allowed for such amendment, and it has been amended, I believe, 27, perhaps 28 times, since the original Constitution was ratified in 1787. If you go back to that time period when our Founding Fathers were debating the same issues that we are debating on the floor of the House this afternoon, you find some interesting facts. First of all, there was no such thing as an income tax anywhere in the world. There were obviously taxes, but those taxes were normally head taxes, property taxes, excise taxes, transaction taxes, duties, fees, tariffs, but there was no income tax because very few people in the world, certainly in the United States, had any income. We were an agrarian economy. Most Americans lived on farms or in small communities and there simply was not a resource there to be taxed. Even then, over 200 years ago, the Founding Fathers were very aware of the sensitivity of the tax burden on the American people. So while they did not require a super majority vote to raise taxes, they did require that the House of Representatives, which was the only body directly elected by the people and the body most responsible to the people, be the body where all tax bills originated. For 125 years that limitation that all tax bills originate in the House of Representatives worked very well. We did not have an explosion in growth of the Federal Government. In 1913, we had the 16th amendment to the Constitution of the United States that said specifically that an income tax was constitutional. In 1913, 83 years ago, the first tax form, the first 1040, was passed out in 1913. This is a photocopy, a blown-up photocopy of the original 1040 form back in 1913. Those of you that can read it, you find out some very startling information. First of all, the normal tax, the normal tax that most Americans who even had to pay an income tax paid, was 1 percent on net income up to $20,000. Less than one tenth of 1 percent of the American population had to pay that normal tax of 1 percent. The richest American, an American who made over $500,000 in 1913, had to pay 6 percent. But most Americans paid no income tax, or paid 1 percent. By 1949, the year that I was born, the tax burden had grown to 5 percent on the American taxpayer, and today the average tax burden is 40 percent. The marginal tax rate on the average taxpayer in America today is 40 percent. If you want to calculate percent increase from 1913, and 1 percent to 1996 and 39.8 percent or 40 percent, it is 4,000-percent increase 4,000 percent. That is too much. The debate today is about making it more difficult to raise taxes on the American people in the future. It is not about whether we had the appropriate number of hearings in the Committee on the Judiciary. It is not about the exact definition of de minimis in Webster's Dictionary, it is all about the basic principle of making it more difficult to raise taxes than it is under the current simple majority tax increase vote requirement. It is a very simple concept. Two-thirds as a fraction is a higher number than one-half as a fraction. In fact, it is a higher number by 16 and two-thirds percent, one-sixth, 16.67. Translated into votes in the House, you would go from 218 votes needed to 290 votes. In the Senate you would go from 50 votes or 51 votes needed to 67 votes needed. So that is what we are debating this evening. There are some States that have tax limitations on their books today. There are 10 States. These States range from the largest State in the Union, the State of California, to the State where President Clinton was Governor, the State of Arkansas. And you can see the other 8 States. There are four things that are true in every State in the Union that has tax limitation. The first thing that is true is that taxes go up more slowly. In States that have some sort of supermajority requirement for increasing taxes, taxes do not not go up. They do go up. In fact, they have been going up, 102 percent between 1980 and 1992. In the States that do not have a supermajority requirement, taxes have gone up 121 percent. That difference of 19 percent, if you calculated it on the Federal tax rate, you would have lower taxes in the Federal Government this year of around, I believe $160 billion. So the first thing in all 10 States is that taxes go up more slowly than they do in States that do not have tax limitations. The second thing we find out is that, since taxes are not going up as fast in tax limitation States, spending is not going up as fast. Again, between 1980 and 1992, in the supermajority tax increase States, their spending went up about 132 percent. But in States that do not have a supermajority requirement to raise taxes, their spending went up 141 percent. So that is a 9-percent savings in spending. Mr. Speaker, if we calculate 9 percent of $1.6 trillion we are spending here at the Federal Government this year, that is about $145 billion savings in spending. Now, since taxes are not going up as rapidly and spending is not going up as rapidly in those States, some good things begin to happen. The first thing that happens is that employment does grow more rapidly. In States that have a supermajority requirement, the average number of people working went up about 26 percent. In States that do not have a supermajority requirement, employment grew, but only 21 percent. So you have a 5-percent differential there. Last but not least, since there are more people working in States with a supermajority requirement for a tax increase, the economy in those States grew more rapidly, 43 percent versus 35 percent in the nonsupermajority States. So those four things are true in every State. Taxes do not go up as rapidly, therefore spending does not go up as rapidly, therefore you create more jobs, and you create more wealth in the State. So the way I say this is a simplified fashion, taxes go up lower, taxes are lower, therefore spending goes up slower in States that have the supermajority requirement. And therefore the taxpayers are not left high and dry like they are in States without the supermajority requirement. Mr. Speaker, I am a lower, slower guy. I am not a higher, dryer guy. The last thing I would say on these 10 States, not one State that has passed supermajority has repealed it. In some of these States, the supermajority requirement for a tax increase has been on the books for decades. With that, I would be happy to yield to my friend from Arizona for such time as he may wish to consume.

Mr. BARTON of Texas

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Serious military conflict.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, I have great sympathy for the gentleman from Virginia when he talks about a certain number of States with a small percent of the population thwarting the will of the majority. Texas and Colorado were not in the original 13 Colonies. Virginia was. It was one of the big States, but it lost on that issue. It was called the great compromise. The House was the representative of the people, the Senate representative of the States. I can be sympathetic with you, but we lost that fight 200 years ago.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. It is the gentleman's time and he has been very gracious and I think this is helpful. I do not want to abuse his time. But as in any constitutional amendment if we pass it, and in my opinion it is not if we pass it, it is when we pass it, there will be obviously implementation language, implementation law, legislation, as in any constitutional amendment. These types of questions will be extensively debated in the committee, on the floor, in conference with the Senate, in conjunction with the President and the Cabinet officers involved in the particular debate and I am absolutely confident that the democratic process will yield satisfactory answers to these questions. The basic principle, once again, is making it more difficult to raise revenue, the tax burden of the American taxpayer, and I do not think there is any misunderstanding about that between the two distinguished gentlemen on the Democratic side, or certainly myself and the gentleman from Arizona [Mr. Shadegg] on the Republican side. That is the principle that we are debating.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. The Medicare part A is a payroll tax.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. The Social Security tax as a payroll tax is one.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Well, there are some other broad-based taxes.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Internal revenue is certainly the internal income tax system, the internal revenue system of this Nation, and it is taxes that have to be paid by the American people. To the gentleman from Virginia, when he talked about user fees, you could certainly raise the user fee to the national parks by a majority vote. That is not part of the Internal Revenue Code of this Nation. We will have the chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means on the House floor sometime this evening, and the chairman and I will engage in a colloquy in which just those kinds of questions are asked and answered.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. I am not opposed to more debate on it.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. I will stand by what I say. I believe that my explanation is correct.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. On that specific point, as you know, Medicare consists of two different parts, part A and part B. Medicare part A is funded by a tax, and you have to pay it if you are working in this country. I believe it is 1.2 percent, but it is certainly a tax. Medicare part B is not mandatory, it is voluntary. Admittedly 94 or 95 percent of the American senior citizens choose to participate in Part B, but it is voluntary. Those that choose understand if they so choose they have to pay part of the premium. Under the resolution that is on the floor today, it would not take a two-thirds vote to change the medicare part B premium. It would take a two-thirds vote to raise the part A tax, unless at the same time you lower taxes on that part.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield further, first of all we are not here to either praise Caesar or bury Caesar, Caesar being the current Tax Code; we are here to come up with an amendment to make it more difficult to raise taxes. I guess what I might have said when I said ``least offensive,'' we wanted to use a term that was as close to revenue neutrality as possible, without saying revenue-neutral, because it is physically impossible if you want to change the entire tax system or you want to monitor it or modify it in some way, to speculate down to the penny that the change is not going to increase taxes. So de minimis was as close to revenue-neutral in terms of terminology as we could get.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Because that is voluntary. That is not a tax.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. If the gentleman will continue to yield, this legislation does not preclude any tax loophole from being closed. This gentleman from Texas is not on the Committee on Ways and Means. I believe each of you two gentlemen is. I may be incorrect in that assumption. So you and the other members of the Committee on Ways and Means can do whatever you want. If you pass a tax law that has the effect of raising the tax burden on the American people more than a de minimis amount, it will take a two-thirds vote. If you want to change taxes, cut taxes, you want to lower revenues, you can do that with a simple majority vote.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. That is not the Committee on the Judiciary. But if I could, I would like to talk about your principle of majority rule. I think you said that there were 10 States, or 10 percent of the population had 34 Senators. I am going to just read the presentment clause in the Constitution. It says: Every bill shall have passed the House of Representatives and the Senate before it becomes a law, be presented to the President of the United States. ``Shall have passed.'' It does not say ``shall have passed by a majority,'' or ``shall have passed by a supermajority.'' It just says ``shall have passed.'' In the original Constitution there were 7 two-thirds supermajority requirements: Conviction in impeachment trials, article II, section 3, clause 6; expulsion of a Member of Congress, article I, section 5, clause 2; override of a Presidential veto, article I, section 7, clause 2, quorum of two-thirds of the States to elect the President, article II, section 1, clause 3; consent to a treaty, article II, section 2, clause 2; proposing constitutional amendments which is what we are doing today, article V; and State ratification of the original Constitution, article VII. Since that time, there have been 3 additional two-thirds supermajority vote requirements added to the Constitution, which brings the number to 10. The purpose of a supermajority requirement, in my opinion, and if you read the Federalist papers and some of the writings of James Madison, it was felt that if the issue was large enough that it needs more than a slim majority, that you really need consensus, you need a supermajority or a two-thirds vote. Certainly in today's era, it is this gentleman's opinion that raising taxes any higher than they already are is one of those occasions that we need to amend the Constitution and require a supermajority.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Hopefully today.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will continue to yield, I will concede the gentleman's point that more debate at the committee would have certainly been in order. I am not going to deny that. I will point out, though, that the day after the vote on the tax limitation balanced budget amendment, I believe in February 1995, the Speaker of the House said that we would have a vote on the tax limitation amendment as a stand-alone amendment on April 15 or near April 15, 1996, so the concept has been out there for a year. We certainly have had numerous hearings on it in some of the think tanks and things of this sort, so it is not as if this is a brand new concept that people have trouble grasping.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, If the gentleman will continue to yield, I think there is some validity to that concern. We did have one hearing at the Committee on the Judiciary subcommittee. I certainly was not opposed to hearings at the full committee. For whatever reason, those hearings were not held. I will point out, and the gentleman knows as well as I do, as part of the balanced budget debate, we have had debates on the House floor four times in which the tax limitation balanced budget amendment was one of the amendments that was voted upon. As has been pointed out in the opening statements of the two gentlemen in this special order, we did have a short debate on the three-fifths vote for an income tax increase as a rule change at the start of this Congress. It is not as if this subject has never been debated on the floor. I would also point out, Mr. Speaker, and the gentleman knows this also, this is not physics and rocket science. The American taxpayer very quickly grasps that two-thirds is a higher fraction than one-half.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. One-tenth of 1 percent of the existing revenue that is being generated by the current tax system.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. I thank the distinguished gentleman from Colorado for yielding, and I am going to make two points, and then I am going to yield back since it is your time. I wanted to focus on this, the majority argument that you were speaking of, but before I do that I want to directly answer the question on de minimis. It is our intent that de minimis is equal or less, and in an economy that is $6 trillion, if you want to put a figure on it, in the implementation language and in the colloquy that we will have with the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee later this evening, we are going to say de minimis is one-tenth of 1 percent or less. So that is the number, but de minimis is defined as negligible, or minimal, or having little or no value.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. This constitutional amendment, as all constitutional amendments, are subject to court review, which as a strict constitutionist I know that the gentleman from Colorado would support that.

Mr. BARTON of Texas. That is certainly true. A future Congress could change the implementation standard.

Mr. BARTON of Texas

Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, later this evening we are going to have a historic vote, the first vote on a supermajority requirement to raise your taxes. The amend is to my left, and you will have an opportunity to read it. When I was in the fourth grade at Travis Elementary in Bryan, TX, my fourth-grade teacher was Miss Andrews. That is where I learned fractions. I learned in the fall of 1960 that two-thirds is a higher fraction than one-half. If you can understand that concept, then you understand the tax limitation constitutional amendment. Those of us that support it want to make it more difficult to raise your taxes. If you agree with that, then support the Congressmen who are going to vote for the Barton tax limitation amendment later on this evening on the floor.