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Floor Statement of Rep. Linder on Energy Stamps

Display: Energy Stamps -- The Biggest Welfare Program Ever


June 26, 2009

Contact: Janet Rossi


Mr. Chairman, some Members deny this bill is a massive tax hike.  To them, I can only say you’re not paying attention.  Everything takes energy.  If you raise the price of energy, as this bill does, you raise the price of everything.  CBO admits it, again and again.
 
The authors know very well their bill is a massive tax hike.  That’s why, as this chart shows, they create the largest welfare program in U.S. history, to relieve some.  This legislation would pay checks – call them energy stamps – to 16 times as many people as are on welfare now.
 
Here’s what it says on page 1010:

 
“The Secretary shall…administer…the ‘Energy Refund Program’…under which eligible low-income households are provided cash payments to reimburse the households for the estimated loss in their purchasing power resulting from (this bill) ….each eligible low-income household…shall be entitled to receive monthly cash payments…if…the gross income of the household does not exceed…150 percent of the poverty line...”
 

65 million Americans fall below 150 percent of poverty.  Every one would receive a monthly energy stamp check, on top of any welfare or other benefits they collect now. 
 
Amazingly, this number is down from prior versions because Democrats, predictably, removed any vestige of middle class tax relief.
 
So the other 235 million Americans would get nothing but a new National Energy Tax.  Every family of four earning over $33,000 “loses” – getting no energy stamps but all the energy tax hikes. 
 
So much for the President’s pledge to cut taxes for 95 percent of Americans.  And so much for the Speaker’s pledge that this won’t raise costs for American families.
 

In his 1935 State of the Union Address, Franklin Roosevelt said “continued dependence upon relief induces a spiritual and moral disintegration fundamentally destructive to the national fibre. To dole out relief in this way is to administer a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the human spirit.” 
 
On that President Roosevelt was right, as surely as this legislation is wrong. 
 
Vote no.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 




June 2009 Floor Statements