Barack Obama

Remarks by Senator Barack Obama on the Paris Hilton Tax Break

Wednesday, June 7, 2006

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First of all, let's call this trillion-dollar giveaway what it is - the Paris Hilton Tax Break. It's about giving billions of dollars to billionaire heirs and heiresses at a time when American taxpayers just can't afford it.

The Republicans have brought out the Paris Hilton Tax Break in June because they're eager to make it an election issue in November.

And I think that's fine. In fact, I'm eager for the American people to choose. Because if people want their government to spend one trillion dollars - an amount more than double what we've spent on Iraq, Afghanistan, and the War on Terror combined - on tax breaks for multimillionaires and multibillionaires, than the Republican Party is your party.

If the American people want to borrow billions more from the Chinese, spend billions more in taxes to pay the interest on our debt, and watch billions cut from health care and education and Gulf Coast Reconstruction, then the Paris Hilton Tax Break is your tax break.

This isn't about saving small businesses and family farms. We can reform the estate tax to protect these Americans. We can set it at a level where no small business or family farm is ever affected - and we can do it in a way that doesn't cost us a trillion dollars. In fact, we've offered to reform the estate tax in this way time and time again.

But over and over, our offer has been refused, which can only mean that the party in power is really interested in giving this money to the wealthiest of the wealthy.

And so I would ask the American people one question. At a time like this - a time where America finds itself deeply in debt, struggling to pay for a war in Iraq, a war in Afghanistan, security for our homeland, armor for our troops, health care for our workers, and education for our children - at a time of all this need, can you imagine opening Forbes magazine, looking at their list of the 400 wealthiest Americans, and realizing that our government gave the people on that list over half a trillion dollars worth of tax breaks?

I know I can't imagine that. And I would bet that most Americans can't imagine that either. So if the Republicans want to bring up their Paris Hilton Tax Break to use it as an election issue later, I say go for it. Because I can think of no better statement about where and how we differ in priorities than that.