House of Representatives - October 7, 2004
Mr. Speaker, today's martial law bill is necessary because we need to pass this Republican tax bill which is a cookie jar of tax cuts for corporate interests.
Now, the bill contains goodies for the Restaurant Association, the ethanol producers, the big timber companies, it provides sweets for those who have enough money to own their own corporate jets. It even dishes out rewards to the railroads like treasury Secretary Snow's former company CSX.
What's appalling, Mr. Speaker, is not that the bill provides goodies for U.S. firms. The Republican Congress does that all the time. What's appalling is that most of the cookies here in the jar are U.S. companies that take their profits and their operations and American jobs overseas.
This is an overseas cookie jar. Some of the biggest winners in this jar are multinational corporations. There's a cookie here for big oil and a cookie here for big tobacco, and a cookie here for alcoholic beverage industry, and a cookie for the pharmaceutical industry, imagine that. They've been doing so badly, you know.
These companies enjoy record profits. Oil is $52 a barrel today. Now, American consumers are getting gouged but instead of passing an excess profits tax, this Congress is going to give the oil companies another tax break. No wonder Exxon Mobil's stock is now up 30%. If you sniff real carefully you can see why Wall Street can smell these cookies. They've been hanging around in the halls up above my office the last couple of days.
This bill is going to raise taxes, raise taxes, on America's biggest exporters and lower taxes for businesses that go offshore. For those firms that move offshore we're going to give you some cookies.
Republicans think that passage of this bill the day before the President's debate on domestic issues with Mr. Kerry will somehow either get lost this that or will be used in it about how "I gave big tax breaks to the companies," I don't know what they're going to do with it but they've got something planned that didn't come up today under martial law because they hadn't planned it for six months.
Now, come November 2, Mr. Speaker, this Congress is going to learn that that's not how the cookies crumble.
I urge my colleagues to vote against this rule and against the conference agreement and get the special interest grubby hands out of their cookie jar. If you get a cookie in your area, you can have one from my jar. Just come on over and get it.
Revision date: May 10, 2005
