Airline Consumer Protection Act of 2005

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

(Ms. SLAUGHTER asked and was given permission to revise and extend her remarks.)

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate my Republican colleagues for providing the American people with

the clearest possible demonstration of just how stark the differences are between the priorities of our Nation's two major parties.

We have before us a bill whose sole purpose, the sole purpose is to funnel as much as $1 trillion over the next decade to a mere handful of our Nation's richest families.

It is telling that Republican leadership is so committed and so determined to see this legislation through that it called an emergency meeting of the Rules Committee last night to make sure it reached the floor this morning, even though it will not take effect for 4 years.

Now, let me tell you a bill that will expire is the Voting Rights Act, but we could not deal with that. This is the Republican definition of a national emergency, to get as much money as we can to the richest among us. It is not unprecedented national debt. That does not bother them. The struggling middle class? No. Or the fact that tens of millions of Americans scrape by from paycheck to paycheck, scrape by without health insurance, without help and, in many cases, without hope.

To get this bill to where it is today, the Republicans had to ignore the needs of virtually every American citizen. The repeal of the estate tax will benefit less than 1 percent of the people in this country, but those few individuals that it helps will profit handsomely.

Take Lee Raymond, the former CEO of ExxonMobil, who recently secured a retirement package worth almost $400 million, and who last year made more in a single day, probably in a single hour, than the average American family makes in an entire year. Lee stands to gain up to $211 million from this legislation that he will not pay taxes on.

President Bush, Vice President Cheney and the officers of the Cabinet will not do so badly either. Together they will pocket anywhere from $91 million to $344 million. Just the Cabinet.

People like these are among the three-tenths of 1 percent of superrich Americans who pay an estate tax, and that is it. The other 99.7 percent do not see a dime. Such an astonishingly lopsided outcome is to be expected when we realize who is actually behind this bill.

A recent report from the group Public Citizenry revealed that 18 of the richest families in America, families worth a combined total of $185 billion, have been conducting a concerted and clandestine campaign on its behalf for a decade. We are talking about families that are heirs to the fortunes of families like Wal-Mart, Campbell's Soup and Mars, Incorporated. These 18 families, Mr. Speaker, have spent $490 million in the last decade in their effort to pass this bill. Imagine that, $490 million to lobbyists, and if it does pass, their investment will certainly have been worth it because over $70 billion will be headed their way.

For years, supporters of a repeal of the estate tax have claimed that the people they really want to help are America's small businesses and farmers. Well, as is so often the case, that is a lie. Small business families rarely, if ever, pay estate taxes, and the American Farm Bureau, one of the leading proponents of this repeal, has failed to provide even one legitimate example of a family that lost its farm because of estate tax requirements.

This is the kind of government Republicans have used their time and power to give us, Mr. Speaker. Multibillionaires say, jump, and the majority says, how high?

Bills like this are so outlandish and so entirely justifiable, they would be comical if they were not an assault on the strength of our Union, which is, I might remind everyone, at war.

Consider the opportunity cost of this bill. For the up to $1 trillion Federal that this leadership plans to give away, we could fully insure every single American who does not have health insurance, all 44 million of them. Think of that. We could fully fund the Medicare part D prescription plan. We could pay for all military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, and then we could use the money left over from that to fully fund No Child Left Behind, and, finally, give every child in America the education the President promised when he took office.

The sad thing is that what we have today is exactly the kind of legislation Americans should expect the majority, whose leader has bragged about never having voted for an increase in the minimum in his 25 years in politics, that is what we should expect from a party that would not allow the Congress to adjust the minimum wage for inflation, a party that would have, over the decades, permitted it to remain at the pathetic $3.35 an hour.

I would challenge my friends on the other side of the aisle to try surviving on that one for a month, Mr. Speaker, and think about the trillionaires who are going to say this is chump change to them, and they do not care. But the notion that they would say if taking away the taxes of the very rich would stimulate the economy, while increasing the pay of the weakest among us, the people who are least paid, will hurt the economy, is an absurdity on its face.

Mr. Speaker, this is a telling moment for this country. It is a moment in which this leadership clearly demonstrates once and for all what its priorities are. It is making the decision that educating our children is not worth the investment, that ensuring our parents and grandparents receive the prescription drugs they need is not worth the investment; that fixing our broken health insurance system is not worth the investment; that curbing our crushing national debt is not worth the investment; but investing in the ultrarich is worth every single dime that can be squeezed out of the Federal Treasury.

The bill embodies the very definition of ``America for Sale.'' Today's Republicans are alone in this belief, Mr. Speaker. Great leaders throughout the history of our Nation have understood that our collective strength lies in our support for the working and the middle class. They have understood that the extreme polarization of wealth this majority is ushering in is fundamentally bad for America, and among those who believe that are Bill Gates and Warren Buffett.

I implore my friends on the other side of the aisle, for the sake of our children, for the sake of our future, for the sake of our military, for the sake of common decency, defeat this bill and begin again to work for the people of this Nation and not against them.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts, a member of the Rules Committee, Mr. McGovern.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from New York, the ranking member of the Ways and Means Committee, Mr. Rangel.

(Mr. RANGEL asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentlewoman from Connecticut (Ms. DeLauro).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Kucinich).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from North Dakota (Mr. Pomeroy), who was denied an amendment in the Rules Committee.

I too have no further requests for time, so I will close.

Mr. Speaker, I think what we ought to call this tax is the Paris Hilton tax. Paris Hilton, once this is passed, will be able to jetset again around the world buying herself more bling and more little dogs to carry around in her purse, and probably never work a day in her life.

But while we are helping Paris with her problems, I think we need to think about the poorest among us, those people working two and three minimum-wage jobs every single day simply to try to keep themselves alive and that we have turned our backs on now for over a decade.

So I urge all Members of this House to vote ``no'' on the previous question so I can amend the rule and allow the House to vote on the Miller-Owens bill to increase the Federal minimum wage for the first time in almost 10 years. The bill is identical to the minimum-wage language included in the Labor-HHS appropriations bill that was supposed to come to the floor this week, but was pulled by the leadership.

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to insert the text of the amendment and extraneous materials immediately prior to the vote on the previous question.

Mr. Speaker, my amendment to the rule provides that immediately after the House adopts the rule for the Paris Hilton bill, it will bring H.R. 2429 to the floor for an up-or-down vote. The bill will gradually increase the minimum wage from the current level of $5.15 an hour to $7.25 an hour after 2 years.

Mr. Speaker, it is time we started to help workers, instead of making the very rich in this Nation richer. And I want us to stop this nonsense that we are doing this for poor farmers. Nobody can come up with a name of a poor farmer. And we will ask the State of Indiana to give us a list of all those people who went under because of this tax.

But we are considering another massive tax cut for our Nation's wealthiest. And to make matters worse, it is done the same week that the leadership of the House blocked legislation to increase the minimum wage for those who need the help the most.

America's low-income workers need our help, but millionaires don't. We are losing our middle class. One of the best things we can do to help the low- and moderate-income families is to increase the minimum wage. It has been, as I said, a decade since it was voted to increase, and it was signed in law in 1996 with the last increase in 1997.

After adjusting for inflation, the value of the minimum wage is at its lowest level since 1955. The purchasing power of the 1997 increase has eroded since then by 20 percent. A full-time minimum-wage earner working 40 hours a week makes $10,700 annually, an amount that is $5,000 below the poverty line for a family of three. The minimum wage now equals only 31 percent of the average wage for the private sector and the nonsupervisory workers, and that is the lowest share since the end of World War II.

Mr. Speaker, can there possibly be any doubt that we are long overdue for another increase in the minimum wage?

Leadership in this House has managed to implement numerous tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans, including this billion dollar budget buster that we are considering today, but turns its back on those who work the hardest and are paid the least, those with no lobbyists, those who struggle to make ends meet every day. They don't have any lobbyists but us on their side. And I think it is time for Congress to step up to the plate and help those who need it most, not just those with the fattest bank accounts.

And those who say an increase in the minimum wage will hurt business and economy are plain wrong, and facts argue just the opposite.

So I urge all Members of this body to vote ``no'' on the previous question so that we can help 7 million-plus American workers who will directly benefit from an increase in the minimum wage.

And let me close by saying this is a very sad day because I believe this bill will pass. And I think this Congress of the United States will go on record as saying that we don't care about those people other than those who can hire the lobbyists and do everything that they want to do.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to Ms. Brown.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 885 and ask for its immediate consideration.

Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to the gentlewoman from New York (Ms. Slaughter), pending which I yield myself such time as I may consume. During consideration of this resolution, all time yielded is for the purpose of debate only.

(Mr. HASTINGS of Washington asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Speaker, House Resolution 885 is a closed rule providing 1 hour of general debate in the House on H.R. 5638, the Permanent Estate Tax Relief Act, to be equally divided and controlled by the chairman and ranking minority member of the Committee on Ways and Means.

The rule waives all points of order against consideration of the bill and provides that the amendment printed in the Rules Committee report accompanying this resolution shall be considered as adopted.

Finally, Mr. Speaker, the rule provides one motion to recommit, with or without instructions.

Mr. Speaker, in 2001, Congress acted in a bipartisan fashion to gradually phase out the death tax and eliminate it by 2010. However, if Congress does not act to extend this relief, in 2011 small business owners and family farmers will once again be assessed the full death tax up to the maximum 2001 rate of 55 percent.

The death tax is a form of double taxation, and frankly, Mr. Speaker, it is simply unfair.

The last thing families in central Washington and across the Nation should have to worry about when a loved one dies is losing a family farm or business in order to pay the Internal Revenue Service. But sadly, that is the situation many hard-working families could face if a permanent and workable solution is not agreed to.

H.R. 5638, the Permanent Estate Tax Relief Act, would provide estate and gift tax relief to America's small business owners and family farmers. Specifically, the bill would increase the exemption from $1 million to $5 million per person, indexed for inflation, and it would lower the amount of taxation on estates.

The bill would also provide tax relief for gifts given during a person's life. Currently, gifts given when a person is alive are taxed more than gifts given through a will or death. By reunifying estate, gift and generation-skipping transfer taxes, we give individuals greater flexibility to give gifts during their life rather than at death.

I am also pleased that this legislation creates a new 60 percent deduction for qualified timber capital gains through 2008. In my State of Washington, there are 8.5 million acres of privately owned forests, and the forest parks industry is the State's second largest manufacturing sector.

However, the current Tax Code puts our timber industry at a distinct disadvantage against international competition by subjecting corporate timber and forest product industries to a significantly higher income tax than their overseas competitors. Included in the underlying bill is a provision that lowers the timber tax and supports an industry that provides good jobs in many rural communities, while strengthening its international competitiveness.

Mr. Speaker, last year I, along with 271 other Members of the House, supported a measure that would permanently and fully eliminate the death tax. While permanent elimination of this tax is what I will continue to work with my colleagues on both sides to accomplish, this relief measure is a step in the right direction.

The Rules Committee reported House Resolution 885 by a voice vote last night. Accordingly, I urge my colleagues to support both the rule and the underlying bill.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself as much time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I think it is worthwhile just to put a little bit of the historical context on this issue because it has been around for some time.

In the 106th Congress, for example, in the year 2000, the House passed a bill to phase out the death tax in 10 years and permanently repeal it. When it passed the House, it got 279 votes, obviously bipartisan. Sixty-five Democrats voted for it. In the other body, in the Senate, it passed the Senate with 59 votes, obviously on a bipartisan basis. Unfortunately, that bill was vetoed by the President in the 106th Congress.

So, in the 107th Congress, in 2001, once again, the House passed the bill to permanently repeal the tax, phase it out over 10 years, and that bill garnered 274 votes, again a bipartisan vote out of the House.

Unfortunately, in the Senate, we were unable to get a full repeal and, instead, the death tax was phased out over 10 years, but would revert in 2011 to the 2001 rate. The expectation, of course, was that the Congress would deal with that before 2011 and fully repeal it.

In the 108th Congress, once again the House passed a bill to fully repeal the death tax, 264 votes out of the House, again on a bipartisan basis; and in the 109th Congress, this Congress, once again the House passed a full repeal, 272 votes, again on a bipartisan basis, with Democrats joining Republicans to repeal it.

The unfortunate thing is this leads us to where we are right now, and that is that the cloture motion failed in the Senate. It takes 60 votes in order to cut off debate in the Senate; and, unfortunately, the Senate only received 57 votes. So, therefore, that issue won't be taken up.

This is an effort, then, to try to get to a position where we can pass this bill out of the House and in fact pass it out of the Senate so that we can have some certainty as far as estate planning. So this issue has been around for some time. It has always enjoyed bipartisan support.

This rule simply provides for us to continue what we have been doing in the last four Congresses, and that is to pass and address this issue in a bipartisan manner. This issue has been around, I think it is timely, in fact, it is time for us to act on this. Accordingly, I urge my colleagues to support the rule and the underlying bill.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Pence).

(Mr. PENCE asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 3 minutes to a colleague on the Rules Committee, the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Gingrey).

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Colorado (Mr. Beauprez).

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I ask my friend from New York how many speakers she has, because I at this time have no more requests.

Mr. Speaker, let me just review. This issue has been around in Congress for some time. This House has acted on full repeal of the death tax for the last three Congresses on a bipartisan basis. But the reality is we simply can't get this through the full Congress because the other body simply doesn't have the votes, supermajority votes, I might add, to close off debate over there, so we have to pass something that can pass both Houses of the Congress. This bill does that. And it is important that we pass this bill as soon as we possibly can so those that are trying to plan estates after 2010 can make those plans with some certainty.

So, Mr. Speaker, this is a good bill. This is a good rule.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time, and I move the previous question on the resolution.

Mr. Speaker, the rule before us allows only one alternative. You know, it has been said before but it deserves repeating today: As our troops fight for democracy in Iraq, we ought to show that we can have democracy on the floor of the House.

I went to the Rules Committee with another alternative for reforming the estate tax, and to have on a party-line vote the majority refuse to allow the Members of this body to even consider any other alternative but the Thomas proposal, in my opinion, does violence to notions that this is a deliberative body where ideas can be considered.

The bill before us is not a reform bill of the estate tax, it is virtual repeal, and make no bones about that, virtual repeal of the estate tax.

Look at this chart. The cost of the alternative I advance and have not been allowed to offer is 40 percent the cost of repeal. Our early estimates on the full phased-in cost of the Thomas proposal is that it will lose 80 percent at least of the revenue of full repeal. That is not a compromise.

I bet you are going to hear some of these guys say we are going to compromise. This is not a compromise, it is virtual repeal. You lose 80 percent of the revenue, it is virtual repeal, no compromise.

Now this is a shocking loss of revenue to help a very, very few people. The proposal that I was not allowed to introduce would have made exempt all of the estates but for 3/10 of 1 percent.

Earlier there was a gentleman from Indiana said small businesses have been lost all over the State of Indiana. I believe he is factually mistaken. I issue a challenge to him right now and anyone else, bring me the names. Bring me the names.

There is no fact whatsoever behind these assertions that this is about small farms and family businesses. This is about the wealthiest estates in this country, and now let me put it really to bear.

The distribution table on the Thomas proposal is that of the $800 billion that would be lost between 2010 and 2020, 43 percent would go to those worth more than $20 million. In a decade when we are going to have 78 million Americans turning 65, we have Social Security going out of balance in 2018, we have Medicare going out of balance in 2012, we are going to take $800 billion and ship it to those who make more than $20 million? What in the world are we thinking about?

Medicare and Social Security apply to everybody. The estate tax proposal advanced by the majority today applies to way fewer, way fewer than 3/10 of 1 percent. This sliver showed the number of estates that would have been taxable under the proposal I have not been allowed to offer today. Their proposal that goes to the $20 million crowd and up even deals with a smaller number yet. What in the world are we thinking?

The preceding speaker said he cannot think of anything more that does violence to the American dream than the death tax. Let me tell you about a few other things that do violence to the American dream: This Congress running up a debt and having to vote not just once in March, but again in May to raise the borrowing limit of the country, putting us nearly $10 trillion in debt. Another thing that does violence to the American dream, the cuts that have been made in student loans so people can pursue the notion of upward mobility, they can get ahead in this world, but they cannot afford to get to college, and they cut student loans in the face of it.

And yet the portion of the American dream that they seem most concerned about is for this $20-million-and-up crowd, even while we have no idea how we are going to solve this Medicare solvency imbalance or how we are going to fund the Social Security imbalance.

Let me come back to the basic issue presented by this rule. How come we only have their plan to consider? We have a plan, a plan that makes the estate tax go away completely for 99.7 percent of the people in this country, and they won't even allow it for consideration. Vote down this rule, vote down this virtual repeal of the estate tax.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding time on this important issue. I do rise in support of the permanent Estate Tax Relief Act of 2006, although I am mindful, as I listen to my good friend who just spoke about the estate tax, of what Confucius once wrote a millennium ago. He said: ``When words lose their meaning, men lose their liberty.''

I would prefer in the balance of my remarks to speak not about an estate tax, because I do not know too many estates in eastern Indiana, but I would rather talk about the death tax, because this is a tax that is death to the American Dream for small business owners and family farmers all across eastern Indiana.

It is why, Mr. Speaker, I have dedicated myself in my nearly three terms in Congress to the principle of ending this immoral tax, a tax which, by the way, was instituted in 1916 primarily to raise revenues for World War I. It was a product of a time where the redistribution of wealth was seen globally to be an acceptable practice of economics. It was the very nascent time of socialism on the world stage, and America embraced this principle of redistribution with the estate tax in 1916.

Let me just say that I believe death taxes are immoral. I believe it is morally wrong to make death a taxable event. I believe it is also morally wrong to say to small business owners and family farmers and any American, whatever their means, that after a lifetime of obeying the law and a lifetime of paying your share honestly and legally to the Federal Treasury that we will make your death a taxable event.

So I want to say today that I still believe that we ought to repeal the death tax, and the legislation we will consider under this rule does not repeal, but I want to say that it is relief and it is progress and this Congress should embrace it.

The estate tax relief provided in previous legislation is scheduled to end in 2010, and what we will pass today will literally bring permanent estate tax relief to millions of American families, especially increasing the exemption to $5 million per person effective January 1, 2010. So let me emphasize that what we will do today is not repeal, but it is relief; and I want to recognize that progress and embrace it.

Let me close with a word of caution to our colleagues who may think of this as a starting point, that this is a deal, Mr. Speaker, that we can send down the hallway and we can negotiate from: let me say, having spoken to many of my colleagues who share my belief that we should repeal this onerous death tax outright, that if this is the deal, it is a good deal for the American people. But we say with conviction: this far and no farther. We must demand, at the very minimum, this relief stand when this bill goes to the desk of the President of the United States.

Mr. Speaker, I want to begin by saying to my friend from Indiana, I think it would be helpful for this Congress to have the information about all of the family farms that have gone out of business in Indiana because of this estate tax. I think it would be helpful if we wrote to the appropriate officials in Indiana to get that list so we could share it with everyone here and see how it impacts this legislation.

I want to say, the last 24 hours will tell you everything you need to know about what is wrong with Congress: holding up the Voting Rights Act; knocking down the minimum wage increase; relieving the superrich from responsibility for paying estate taxes; and keep sending our children to fight and die in a war based on lies. That, by the way, is the real death tax, and it is paid by the poor and the middle class.

Our new motto should be: ``United We Stand, Sure. But Divided We Profit.''

H.R. 5638, the estate tax legislation, should be more accurately described as the American Idle Act, I-D-L-E, because it relieves the children of billionaires and multimillionaires of over one-quarter of a trillion dollars of estate taxes in just the 5 years starting in 2013. The $2,600 per taxpayer loss of revenue will take money from our schools, our health care, our senior citizens, and our veterans.

The Bible says it is easier for a camel to get through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get to heaven. Here in Washington, the superrich ride elephants, and hopefully no donkeys, to get to their alabaster heaven where they pay no taxes.

Money, most of which has never been taxed once, will continue to gush upwards. The estate tax is cleverly tied to the capital gains rate, currently at 15 percent. Estates up to $25 million or $50 million for a couple will pay the capital gains rate of 15 percent, and those over that will pay double the rate; but what will happen when Congress eliminates the capital gains tax? There will be no estate tax because one or even two times zero is still zero. At that time the destruction of the middle class will be complete. The ascendency of a new plutocracy will be complete.

Allan Sloan of Newsweek put it this way 2 years ago: ``In the name of preserving family farms and keeping small businesses in the family, President Bush would create a new class of landed aristocrats who would inherit billions tax-free, invest the money, watch it compound tax-free and hand it down tax-free to their heirs.''

President Lincoln didn't pray for a government of the wealthy, by the wealthy and for the wealthy at Gettysburg. He prayed for a government of the people, by the people and for the people. Whose prayers are we answering here?