{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://mcclintock.house.gov/newsroom/press-releases/the-fiscal-cliff", "The Fiscal Cliff", "2012-12-12", "2012", "2012-12", "Republican", "House", "CA", "Tom McClintock", "M001177", "mcclintock.house.gov", "mcclintock", "https://mcclintock.house.gov/newsroom/press-releases", "scraper", "Congressman Tom McClintock\n\nHouse Chamber, Washington, D.C.\n\nDecember 12, 2012\n\nMr. Speaker:\n\nTo understand the federal budget mess and the so-called fiscal cliff, it\u2019s important to remember three numbers: 39, 37 and 64.\n\nThirty nine percent is the combined increase of inflation and population over the last ten years. Thirty nine percent.\n\nThirty seven percent is the increase in revenues during the same period. That\u2019s despite the recession and tax cuts. Not quite keeping place, but pretty close.\n\nSixty four is what\u2019s killing us. Sixty four percent is the increase in federal spending in that period. That\u2019s nearly twice the rate of inflation and population over the last ten years.\n\nThe spending side of the fiscal cliff is the so-called sequester: automatic cuts in federal spending. To hear some tell it, these cuts will mean the end of western civilization.\n\nHardly. After a 64 percent increase in expenditures this decade, the sequester doesn\u2019t actually cut spending at all: it simply limits spending growth next year to about a half a percent.\n\nI opposed the budget deal that created the sequester last year because it fell woefully short of what Standard and Poors clearly warned was necessary to preserve the nation\u2019s triple-A credit rating. Sadly, that fear was born out. But now, the sequester is all we have.\n\nIt\u2019s true that defense takes the brunt of it, but does our defense spending today really need to be higher \u2013 inflation adjusted -- than it was at the height of the Vietnam War, when we faced down the Soviet Union and had 500,000 combat troops in the field?\n\nThe sequester isn\u2019t stepping off a cliff \u2013 it\u2019s taking one step back from the cliff.\n\nThe tax increases, however, are a different matter. Without intervention, the federal tax burden will balloon 21 percent at the stroke of midnight on New Year\u2019s Eve, taking somewhere between two and three thousand dollars from an average family. This summer, the House passed legislation to protect our nation from such a calamity, but Mr. Obama vowed to veto it and the Senate blocked it.\n\nInstead, Mr. Obama tells us that he will veto any plan that keeps taxes from going up on those very wealthy folks making over $200,000, who, he says, need to pay their fair share.\n\n(I suppose fairness is in the eye of the beholder. The top one percent earns 17 percent of all income but pays 37 percent of all income taxes. But that\u2019s beside the point).\n\nThe fine point of it is that a lot of those very wealthy folks making over $200,000 aren\u2019t very wealthy and they aren\u2019t even folks: they\u2019re 1.3 million struggling small businesses filing under sub-chapter S. Our small businesses produce two-thirds of the new jobs in our economy.\n\nThis battle IS very much FOR the middle class. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that Mr. Obama\u2019s tax increase on the so-called wealthy will actually throw some 200,000 middle and working class families into unemployment. Two hundred thousand. And that\u2019s the optimistic estimate. An independent analysis by Ernst and Young puts that figure at closer to 700,000 lost jobs.\n\nThat\u2019s because the President\u2019s taxes would slam 84 percent of net small business income \u2013 that\u2019s precisely the income used to support and expand the labor force.\n\nIn their blind pursuit of an \u201ceat the rich\u201d ideology, Mr. Obama and his acolytes are imposing a policy that would utterly devastate hundreds of thousands of middle class families who depend on the jobs these small businesses provide.\n\nAnd for what? To wring enough money to fund Mr. Obama\u2019s spending spree for a grand total of eight days. It\u2019s telling that three-fourths of the new taxes he has proposed would be used to finance the new spending that he has also proposed.\n\nRepublicans don\u2019t want to see taxes go up on anyone, period. We don\u2019t want to see this government willfully throw hundreds of thousands of Americans out of work by this policy.\n\nThe President obviously believes that in the 11th hour, Republicans will have no choice but ultimately to protect as many taxpayers as we possibly can, since the only alternative will be tax increases on everyone, including the job creators. He may be right.\n\nBut that would mean a bleak and bitter new year for all those families who will watch helplessly as their jobs evaporate before their eyes.\n\nLet us pray the President has a change of heart before setting this calamity in motion.\n\n# # #", 1, "2026-03-30T01:40:41Z", "2026-04-06T21:11:51Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://mcclintock.house.gov/newsroom/press-releases/the-fiscal-cliff"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 0.7656309753656387, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}