George Miller

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. I thank the Chair for the admonition, and I take it seriously. I have counted my words and I have talked about the Grand Teton National Park and the State land transfer and the employees of the park, I think on a ratio of about 12 to 1 to the tax credit, which those employees will be denied, as will some 34,000 other children in Wyoming who will not be eligible for the tax credit because of the actions of the Republicans. But my ratio of nexus to this bill far exceeds my discussion of the tax bill. I have been doing this for many years. And because we do not have an opportunity, and we did not have an opportunity, to discuss a substitute to the tax bill, we have to find ourselves in a situation where we have to talk about it on other matters as they are presented to the House, always closely keeping the nexus between the matter at hand and the subject matter that is far more important to the American people, and especially for those families with those 12 million children who will not get the tax credits this summer because Republicans simply decided that low-income hard-working American families were not entitled to it.

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. The gentleman from California would say to the Chair that I am focusing on the employees of the Grand Teton National Park, which is the subject matter of this legislation. And the reason these lands are being given is to try to maintain the integrity of that park which provides so many economic benefits to the State of Wyoming and to our country through international tourism. And the welfare of those workers ought to be of as much concern to us as the integrity of the land base.

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentlewoman for yielding me the time, and I thank her for presenting this bill on the floor. And this bill has been properly represented. It is a matter of sorting out the equities between Indian water right users and non- Indian water right users, the needs for wetlands development and to protect the sacred rights of the lands of the Zuni people. That is what the legislative process is supposed to be about, but that is not what it was about 2 weeks ago when we passed a tax bill. We could talk about balancing the equities of the Zuni people and the water rights of this bill. Point of Order

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, that I am. We are talking about a bill that has gone through many, many years of negotiation and a bill that is designed to balance the equities. We spent considerable time on a tax bill.

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, regular order is what the gentleman from California is following.

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, I supported the bill. I just do not support business as usual right now, as the gentlewoman understands.

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, I have a follow-up question for the gentlewoman from Wyoming. Does she support improving the child tax credit so that millions of American families can get a tax credit, many in the gentlewoman's State that have been cut out of the tax bill?

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Colloquies are two-way conversations. Would the gentlewoman support the unanimous consent request to bring up the fixing of the tax bill?

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, I answered the gentlewoman's question. I strongly support the bill.

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, the billion dollar tax cut that President Bush signed into law last week was supposed to give everyone who pays taxes a tax cut. In fact, President Bush said, ``My jobs and growth plan would reduce taxes for everyone who pays income taxes.'' The President declared that several weeks ago. Well, now as it turns out, that is not exactly the truth; and the devil is in the details. Because what the President did not tell the American public and what he did not tell America's families waiting for their tax cut was that a back-room deal he struck with the leadership in the House and the Senate, a bill that was sent for his signature, excluded 2.5 million taxpayers and 12 million children from the benefits of this bill. These are mostly single-parent households, with a child 16 years or older, that earn between $10,000 and $26,000 a year. It was not a mistake. It was not an oversight. The Republican tax writers who crafted the final compromise all by themselves, with no Democrats in the room, under the supervision of Vice President Cheney, made a conscious decision to roll back the benefits of the child tax credit for 12 million children to save $3.5 billion. And they did not take that savings and put it into the Treasury against the massive deficit they created. They took that $3.5 billion, and they gave it to corporations who run overseas to avoid taxes; they refused to close the Enron loopholes that destroyed corporations and many people's retirement. They took that money from those 12 million children, and they gave it away so that they would not have to close corporate tax loopholes. Now, what does this mean, and why are we here late into the evening to discuss this matter? Why have so many Democrats lined up to speak on this matter? Because this is an issue of basic fundamental values about our families in this country, about equity, and about fairness. And the Republican tax bill violated all of those values. They made a conscious choice to take families, a husband and a wife earning $15,000 to $20,000, a little bit more, raising a couple of kids, a single parent raising a couple of kids, who are struggling to get by in a tough economy, and they decided that they were simply going to exclude them from the benefits of this tax bill. They were not going to give them the child credit. Now, Congress had made a decision over the past many years, from Ronald Reagan on, that we should have a child credit; that we should try to help offset the cost of raising children for middle-income families and lower-income families and that has been the policy in this country on a bipartisan basis. But this extreme Republican leadership in the House, along with Vice President Cheney and now the Republican leadership in the Senate, decided that these children had less value than other children in the Nation. What kind of person makes that decision about these children that they do not even know, about these parents struggling to raise their children and to pay their health care, to educate them, to provide them the necessities and maybe a little extra on salaries that do not exceed $26,000 a year? What kind of mind, what kind of person was in that room that night when they made a decision to deny these children, to deny these parents this increase of $400 in a tax cut to come this summer, that these children and these families would not get to participate in? It is a corruption and a corrosion of any sense of the public interest. It is a corruption of the process of this Congress that they would do this in the middle of the night in a secret deal and tell no one. It was only after the President signed the bill did they have to admit that this was what was done. First they tried to say it was not true. First they tried to say that this did not affect these families. They were playing a little fast and loose with the truth down at the White House that day through the President's spokespersons. Well, the truth came out. Twelve million children denied the benefits of the child tax credit. This is extremism at its far point. This is a denial of the value of America's families at the extreme. This act must be overturned. It must be overturned soon so that these families too can get that $400 check that they are entitled to under the laws of this land and a decent system of fairness and equity.

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, as the ink is now drying on the tax bill of 2 weeks ago, and as the President and the Republican Party were looting the Treasury and the Social Security System of this Nation on behalf of the wealthiest people in this Nation, we now see there is a monumental defect in this bill in terms of its unfairness and its greed, and that is that millions of working families making wages between $10,500 a year and $26,000 a year will not get to participate in the increase and in the child tax credit. That means they will not get their $400 increase this summer that families with children are entitled to get under the tax bill. Why? Because Republicans simply decided that these people were not worthy of that tax cut, as though it was less expensive to raise their children or their children were not equal to the children of people making over $30,000 a year. An incredible act. An incredible act of greed. An incredible act of unfairness to hard-working families in this country.

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, politics in the making of public policy is about choices. Every day we are called upon to make a choice, but a horrible choice was made by the Republican majority when they wrote the most recent tax bill, a horrible choice that works against millions of families and the children in those families as the Republicans decided that they would not allow those families, families making between $10,500 a year and $26,000 a year, they would not allow them to have the increase in the child tax credit. A $400 a year increase to offset the cost of raising children, that this Congress made a decision about over many years, was proper to do with families to help hold families together, to allow some people to stay home with their children if they chose to do so, the purpose of that credit. Rather than spend the $3 billion on those individuals, they chose to spend it on people making over $1 million a year. People making over $1 million a year will now get $93,000 a year in a tax cut. If we had chosen to take care of those 12 million children who will not get the tax cut because their families earn less than $26,000 a year, those same millionaires would have gotten a tax cut of $88,000. The Republicans made a choice. They chose America's millionaires over America's children. Somehow they decided that the children in upper- income families and middle-class families are more important than those families who are working their tails off going to work every day, all year long and still coming home earning between $10,000 and $26,000. They made a decision that they were going to support the Bush-Cheney class in America over the working class in America. They made a decision that they were going to support millionaires over the children of America. They said when they were caught at these shenanigans over the last few days, when the press discovered what was in the legislation, they said, well, we designed it only for those people who are paying income tax; they are the only ones who should benefit from that. It is rather interesting because they decided they were also going to give the tax benefits of this bill to a number of corporations who pay no income taxes, corporations that have fled America, changed their corporate citizenship for the sole purposes of not paying taxes, and yet we would give them additional tax breaks under this bill. They wanted to say that they wanted to end the double taxation on dividends and that corporations that paid taxes could get a deduction for dividends. By the time the bill was done, corporations that have paid no taxes will get a deduction for dividends, but if someone were a poor family, if they were a poor family and they are working every day and they are making between $10,000 and $26,000 a year and they have children, they are not going to get the increase in that deduction. But these people do pay taxes. The Republicans have it all wrong. They have it all wrong in fairness. They have it all wrong in greed. They have it all wrong in the value of our children and our families in this Nation. This is an incredibly harmful policy to those families who are struggling in and around these wages. The Republicans will not increase the minimum wage to help them support their families. They will not give them the child tax credit to help them support their families. They will not increase the Earned Income Tax credit to help them support their families. Poor people just are not entitled to this. What they get to make is they get to make an increased sacrifice on behalf of the rich. Somebody once said, one would think the Republicans think that the rich have too little money and the poor have too much. It is an incredible policy. The Republicans rail against class warfare, and they declared war on the very survival of these families who are working at the margins. We see them every day. These are people who work hard in difficult jobs, in jobs that most people do not want. They get up and they ride transit, and they go to work and they work and they work and they come home, and at the end of the year they continue to be poor. Past Congresses gave them the child tax credit, and this year when we decided we would give an increase in the child tax credit, we did not decide. The Republicans decided in the back rooms, they decided they would declare their own private war, their own private class warfare on these individuals. They decided to do it on the last night, in the back room, with the lights turned out and with Vice President Cheney casting the deciding vote, who now declares he is ignorant on this. Then how did he vote for it? How did he vote for it? Class warfare, the most mean-spirited, the most greedy action of class warfare we have seen was just committed by the Republican Party in the tax bill against struggling, working, lower-income families in this country.

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. . . .

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. . . .

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. I thank the Chair, and I yield back my time.

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. . . .

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. . . .

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. . . .

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. . . .

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Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, we are spending $100 billion and tragically the loss of young men and women's lives in a war in Iraq that was supposed to be about getting the weapons of mass destruction out of Saddam Hussein's hands so he could not give them to the terrorists. So far, we have not found those weapons of mass destruction. But the gentleman from South Carolina (Mr. Spratt) pointed out to us that there are 5,000 tons of weapons of mass destruction in chemical weapons and gases and sarin chemical that we know exactly where they are. But the Republicans will not allow an amendment in order to protect Americans from the assault from these weapons when they fall into the hands of terrorists. We know exactly where 5,000 tons are. We have not found one ounce in Iraq. There is also nuclear material in the same area of the former Soviet Union and in Central Asia and elsewhere in the world. But they will not allow us to clean it up. They will not allow us to secure it. They are compromising the security of this Nation because this is more likely to fall into the hands of terrorists than anything that Saddam Hussein had.

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. . . .

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. You have to ask yourself, what are they doing to the security of this Nation when they will not allow us to go in and to secure these weapons of mass destruction? Ladies and gentlemen, we are on Orange Alert. We are on Orange Alert as a Nation, and as a Nation and as a Congress we will not be allowed to debate the reduction of these weapons.

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California

Mr. GEORGE MILLER of California. Mr. Speaker, Members of the House, 2 years ago President Bush brought a $1 trillion tax cut to the American public in the name of creating jobs and stimulating the economy. Since the time that he has done that, the economy has lost 2.7 million jobs; 2.7 million Americans out of work, the deficit has soared dramatically, and the economy is moving sideways, at best. Now what does the President suggest? Today he suggests we cut taxes again, another $1 trillion, and that $1 trillion is supposed to create jobs. Very shortly President Bush will reign over the loss of 3 million jobs since he has come to office. The President keeps putting forth this plan as a means of creating jobs. What it has done is it has killed 3 million jobs. The President's economic plan has yet to create its first job, its first job; but it has killed 3 million jobs in the American economy. The American public ought to understand, it is a $1 trillion giveaway to the richest people in the country and a job killer for working Americans.