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Taxes and the Budget
The war in Iraq is costing U.S. taxpayers an estimated $2 billion a week. Returning veterans from this war and the fight in Afghanistan will need medical care, and that will also create a significant additional cost to the federal budget, which is now running an estimated $250 billion annually in debt. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that we will likely continue to run a budget deficit into the next decade, and that means our kids and future generations of Americans are saddled with a per-person debt of almost $30,000.
Reducing spending and balancing the federal budget deficit with tax and expenditure policies that are fair to American families has to be a bipartisan commitment.
With regard to taxes and tax policy, I support responsible tax cuts to help Colorado working families and to create jobs.
- I voted to permanently end the marriage penalty so that people wouldn’t pay more income taxes just because they got married.
- I voted to permanently extend the special 10% tax bracket that has reduced the income tax for millions of people.
- I voted to make permanent the $1,000 child credit that helps people struggling to raise and educate their children and I support the tax credit that helps people adopt children who need loving homes.
- I voted to protect middle-class families from extra taxes under the “alternative minimum tax.”
- I voted to eliminate the estate tax for individuals making $3 million or less and married couples making less than $6 million – or, in other words, cutting the estate tax for 99.7% of estates.
But I have not supported the Bush Administration’s continuing program of excessive tax breaks for the people who need them least. Coming on top of the recession and the need to spend more for homeland security and national defense, the President’s tax cuts have drowned the budget in red ink and led to the worst tax increase of all – the national “debt tax” that will have to be paid by our children. I believe it is immoral to leave this debt to our children and grandchildren and Congress must act to bring fiscal responsibility back to the federal budget.
That is why I have supported measures that will reduce the deficit and bring greater transparency and accountability to our budgeting process. In January 2007, as part of the new rules package adopted by the House, I voted to restore pay-as-you-go rules—suspended since the election of President Bush in 2000—which require that all tax cuts and programs to be paid for in order to stop any new deficit spending.
More recently I signed on as a cosponsor of The Middle Class Opportunity Act of 2007. Middle class Coloradans are facing an untenable combination of financial squeezes; from the growing number of people entangled in increases caused by the alternative minimum tax (AMT) to the increasing costs of paying for higher education, the average Coloradan is getting short shrift in our tax scheme. This important legislation, if passed, would:
- Increase the child tax credit for the first year in which a child is claimed as a qualifying child.
- Expand eligibility for the dependent care tax credit and allow it for expenses to care for parents and/or grandparents not residing with the taxpayer.
- Provide for an increased alternative minimum tax exemption amount through 2008.
- Increase higher education tax credits for middle class families that are too wealthy to take advantage of current tax credits but do not have enough money to pay for college alone.
This legislation, I think, is an important step toward restoring fiscal sanity to our tax system and making the well-being of our middle class a top priority.
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