WASHINGTON
— 7th District Congressman Dave Obey released
the following statement regarding the tax package which the Republican
Leadership pushed through the House of Representatives today while barring
votes on any alternative tax plan:
“Two
years ago, the White House and the Republican Congressional Leadership said
that Congress needed to pass their $1 trillion tax cut with the benefits
focused on the most well-off in order to create jobs.”
“But
since then, the economy has lost 2 million jobs. This new tax bill passed today
is
more of the same medicine. The White House has
been pushing Congress to pass a budget that
would give $37 billion to the most well-off one
percent of our population who make more than
$300,000
per year while it shaves $9 billion from the amount they
promised for education just
a year ago.”
“That is misdirected, misguided, and fiscally
irresponsible.”
“The House Leadership would not even allow us to
vote an alternative that would have provided a smaller, more affordable tax cut
which would produce a much smaller deficit and leave some money on the table to
deal with the problems of education and health care.”
“That is the kind of misguided fiscal policy that
has taken us from the $200 billion surplus inherited by the White House to a
$300 billion-plus deficit that doesn’t even count the cost of the war.”
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“The
pension bill pushed through the House of Representatives today by the
Republican Leadership fails wage earners and retirees in at least three major
respects:”
•
“First, it exposes pensions and retirement savings to greater risk by allowing
self-interested investment firms and consultants to serve as principal financial
advisers and give employees conflicted advice. We can see from Enron that
conflicts of interest are a formula for disaster.”
• “Second, it fails to close a loophole
that has allowed some unscrupulous corporations to break their retirement
promise to older workers and gut pension benefits by up to 50 percent -- through
a mid-stream switch from reliable ‘defined-benefit’ pensions to ‘cash balance’
accounts, in which employees get a one-time lump sum payment that can be far
less than a traditional pension and leaves them exposed to stock market risk.
At the very least, vested employees should be allowed to choose whether to stay
with their traditional defined-benefit plan or change to a cash balance plan.”
• “Third, it fails to correct another
Enron problem since it would allow executives to dump as much company stock as
they wanted but at the same time would restrict employees from selling company
stock they hold in pension accounts during the bill’s five-year phase-in. In
addition, it would require employees to hold company stock for three years
after it is contributed. This was the very loophole exploited by Enron
executives.”
“Congress
ought to be able to do better than that.”
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14,400
Displaced
WASHINGTON
— 7th District Congressman Dave Obey made the
following statement today as part of House debate on legislation that would
extend unemployment compensation benefits for certain categories of displaced
workers but leave behind 14,400 displaced Wisconsin workers (1.1 million
nationwide). The House is expected to pass this bill late tonight.
“The
two bills before the House today perfectly summarize what Republic Party values
have become. Under President Bush we have lost well-more than 2 million jobs in
this economy, and today we have the Republican response.”
“Their
response is to leave behind over I million working Americans who have been out
of work, and cannot find work, and are now no longer even eligible to receive
unemployment.”
“At
the same time they are going to pass a tax bill in the dead of night which
gives a huge share of the benefits in that bill to people who make over
$300,000 a year. That warped and misguided and misbegotten sense of values is
the major reason that I left the Republican Party a long time ago and joined
the Democratic Party.”
“The
Republican Party practices the tired old game of trickle-down economics. They
practice the idea that if you just give John D. Rockefeller enough tax breaks,
eventually some of it will trickle down to Jay Rockefeller. Well, that isn’t
good enough.”
“My
old friend Harvey Duehoim from
“We’ve
seen a miserably mismanaged economy under this Administration. We’ve seen this
Congress swallow-whole budget proposals that walk away from our commitments to
education, walk away from our obligation to do something about the health care
problems in this country, walk away from the problems of the people who have
lost their jobs and are down on their luck and have nowhere to turn and hurt
the economy in the process. And yet, oh, they’ve got plenty of money for the
top dogs in this society.”
“Just
once, be for the average dog -- be for the underdog. I
know that’s too much to expect, but nonetheless I’d like to see it.”
###
Obey Blasts “Back-Room
Deal by GOP Leaders to Cut Out Wage Earners Who Need Tax Relief Most”
WASHINGTON
— 7th District Congressman Dave Obey said
today that the decision made by the Congressional Republican Leadership to
block families making between $10,500 and $26,625 both from receiving a
child tax credit and benefiting from marriage penalty relief at the same time
they provided huge tax cuts for the most well-off one percent making over
$312,000 a year “is appalling -- not just because of
the damage it does to people who need help the most, but also because of what
is says about Republican Party values.”
“It
is outrageous that the Republican Congress left ‘no room in the inn’ for 12
million children who are at or near the poverty level while they were giving
$50,000-plus tax breaks to the most well-off people in the country,” said Obey.
Obey
said that he is cosponsoring legislation introduced by New York Congressman
Charles Rangel that would make those low-income children eligible for the child
tax credit and make their families eligible for the same marriage penalty tax
relief that the Congress made available to other families higher up the income
scale in last month’s “misguided” tax bill.
The
bill would also provide a refundable child tax credit for families with
military personnel serving in
“In
the days of
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