May 17, 2001 Mr. CONRAD. Mr. President, the Senator from Iowa put up some very interesting charts. The one he has there now says: Tax Relief Act Makes Tax Code More Progressive. Then under that it says: First Year Tax Relief. This isn't a 1-year bill. This is a 10-year bill. That is the problem. I displayed a chart earlier about all the measures that are phased in, all the things that come in later on, that benefit the wealthiest people in our country. He puts up a chart that talks about the first-year tax relief. That is not a fair measurement of what this bill does. That is what is wrong with the analysis. This is what the bill does over the 10 years. It gives 70 percent of the benefits to the top 20 percent, and gives 1 percent of the benefits to the bottom 20 percent. It gives 33 percent of the benefits to the top 1 percent, twice as much as the bottom 60 percent receive. There is no way of disputing this. This is what the bill does. That is exactly what it does. I am not putting up a chart that just has the first year. This is not a 1-year bill. The fact is, this bill is heavily weighted to the highest income people in the country. That is a fact. The chairman of the committee showed a previous chart that talked about how much people pay in income taxes. There is something missing from that chart, too. What is missing is payroll taxes. The fact is, 80 percent of the taxpayers of this country pay more in payroll taxes than they pay in income taxes. Our friends on the other side just want to talk about income taxes. They want to forget about the fact that 80 percent of the people pay more in payroll taxes. It is when you put the full picture in front of people that you see the results and the unfairness of this proposal. That is what reveals the top 1 percent get 33 percent of the benefit but only pay 20 percent of Federal taxes. That is when you include the estate taxes, the payroll taxes, the income taxes. But they don't want to talk about all the taxes people pay. They just want to talk about income taxes because that is the only thing that is being cut here--income taxes. If we were going to be fair, we would be talking about all the taxes people pay. When we look at all the taxes people pay, we find this tax cut measure: 33 percent of the benefit goes to the wealthiest 1 percent and the bottom 60 percent only get 15 percent of the benefit. They justify it saying, the top 1 percent pay more income taxes. Yes, they do. Absolutely, I will stipulate to that. They do pay more income taxes. But they don't pay 33 percent or 35 percent of all Federal taxes. No. They pay about 20 percent of all Federal taxes. Yet they are getting 33 percent of the benefit here. It is not fair. That is why it flunks the fairness test. That is why it ought to be opposed. That is why we ought to defeat this, make it go back to committee and come out with something that is more fair to the American taxpayer. I represent a State where half the people make less than $20,000 a year. They aren't going to get any benefit. They are not going to get any rate reduction--none, zero. Are they going to be surprised. The alternative minimum tax that currently affects 1.5 million people, when this gets in place, it will affect nearly 40 million people. Boy, are they going to be in for a big surprise. I don't think this passes the fairness test. I yield the floor.