Saving Who We Can
House Chamber, Washington D.C.
December 20, 2012

   
    The debate over the fiscal cliff has become so hyperbolic that we’re losing touch with common sense. 

    Contrary to many accounts, there is no bill before the Congress that proposes raising taxes on millionaires, or anybody else.  There is a LAW that takes effect on January 1st that will raise taxes on millionaires -- and small businesses filing as millionaires – and everybody else.  And there is a bill that would spare everybody else from those tax increases that is before us today. 

    The President says he wants to protect everybody except those greedy millionaires and billionaires.  That’s precisely what this bill does, but he vows to veto it.   

    The truth is, he wants to sock everybody making over $200,000.  That includes 1.3 million struggling small businesses filing under subchapter S, earning 84 percent of net small business income.  That’s precisely the income they use to produce 2/3 of the jobs in our economy. 

    The Congressional Budget Office warns that Mr. Obama’s “eat the rich” crusade will actually result in throwing 200,000 middle class families out of work.   Ernst and Young estimates 700,000 lost jobs.

     But House Republicans now have a choice: we can try to save as many Americans from these ruinous tax increases as the President will permit; or we can end up at an impasse that assures taxes go up on everyone.

    Let us pass this bill.  If that doesn’t work, then let’s pass whatever level the President will agree to.  It’s not as if we haven’t warned him.

    Some of my fellow conservatives say that sparing most people from these tax increases is tantamount to raising them on others.        

    But if a lifeguard sees ten swimmers drowning off his beach and he can only save nine of them, it doesn’t mean that he’s drowned the tenth. 

    And no lifeguard would be worth a damn if he said: “My principle is that nobody should drown off my beach, and if I can’t save all then I won’t save any.”

    As Americans watch as hundreds of thousands of middle class jobs are sacrificed on the ideological altar of Obamanomics next year -- I think the country will be a lot sadder and a lot wiser.   

    But until then, let’s save who we can.