Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, the Republicans have attempted to remake themselves as fiscal conservatives despite the fact that, with George Bush in the White House and the Republicans in charge of the House and the Senate, that the debt of the United States of America has increased by 62 percent, over $8 trillion. They are borrowing $1.4 billion a day to run the government. They are borrowing every penny of the Social Security surplus and spending it on other things, including tax cuts for the wealthy.

Now they want to cut. What do they want to cut? Students loans, Medicare, Medicaid, foster care, and other programs that are important to struggling American families, under the guise of fiscal responsibility.

Now they want to do $50 billion of cuts, but they also want to do $70 billion of tax cuts for the wealthiest among us. They want to make permanent the cuts in capital gains taxes. They want to reward wealth, not work; and they want to make permanent the cuts in dividend taxes. In order to facilitate that, they want to cut these other programs.

They want to benefit approximately 1 percent of the society, those who earn over $300,000 a year and have estates worth more than $6 million. But one thing we have got to give them is they are relentless and consistent and they are successful. Last year, the IRS says that 99 percent of the people in America saw their real incomes decline. Everybody who earned less than $300,000 after inflation saw a decline. Up to $1.3 million, they did okay. Over $1.3 million, they did phenomenonally well. Now the President's Tax Commission says that is exactly what the future should be. That is trickle down. We want more for the wealth, not for those who work.

Their proposals are extraordinary. They would say that dividends should be free of tax. So if one is someone who is lucky enough to be born into a wealthy family, they inherit millions of dollars and they invest it in dividend-paying stocks, they would never pay a penny in Federal taxes because they are a wealth creator, they are a job generator, they are trickling down on the rest of America. Is that not nice of them? But they would not contribute to the society.

And then we have stocks. Well, on stocks they want to say 75 percent of the gain should be tax-free, again benefiting, for the most part, the same people. But the funny thing they are doing here is they want to talk about wealth creators and entrepreneurs, but they stick it to the small business people.

If one has a small business, they build it up and they sell it for a million bucks, guess what? Their tax rate is 33 percent under the President's new proposal. But if they have been speculating in the stock market, they would only have to pay at 8 percent. If they had been happy enough or lucky enough to inherit money and clip dividend coupons, they would have paid 0 percent. But, no, if they built up their small business, they are going to pay 33 percent; and those suckers who work for a living, they will pay on every penny of income. Somebody who earns $25,000 a year will pay a tax rate at about three times the person who invests in stocks and realizes capital gains.

This is their vision of the world: trickle down economics, trickling on the majority of America and last year trickling on 99 percent of the people in America. It is working well, they say, and we should do more of the same. And, ironically, they want to borrow money to perpetuate this. They are going to take all the Social Security surplus and spend it in part to finance these long-term tax cuts for the wealthiest among us.

They should be ashamed, and trickle-down economics does not work.