mr. speaker , i am in opposition to the substitute because i am for the underlying bill and i am for the things it has done for our economy . 
one of the great changes that this bill showed in what happens in the federal government is a belief that people are better at solving economic problems than government is . 
when the tax structure that we are voting today to extend was put in place , the determination was made that we were in a difficult economic time , and the way to get out of that difficult economic time was to trust the people , not to come up with some big complicated government program , but to trust the people to let them keep more of their money , to put some minor incentives in the tax code to do whatever they wanted to do sooner , rather than later , but no incentive in the tax code to do a specific thing . 
the incentive was to trust the american people to see what we could do to get the economy growing again and going again , and that is what has happened . 
but this is no time for that to stop . 
this is no time to say we should put the brakes on this economy , just because the unemployment rate is lower than the average of the 1970s , 1980s and 1990s . 
it is still 5 percent . 
we should want it to be lower than that . 
just because income to the federal government increased last year at a rate three times the projection , the highest increase in federal government ever without a tax increase , how did that happen ? 
it happened because the economy was working . 
it happened because more people had jobs , that $ 100 billion that came in in the fiscal year that ended september 30 that we did not anticipate , did not come i was listening to the debate earlier , and so much of the debate earlier was about wealthy americans . 
amazingly , those same americans yesterday were the upper middle class . 
overnight somehow the upper middle class became wealthy americans . 
but not just the upper middle class benefits from this . 
all americans benefit from this in their own way . 
in the reduction in the capital gains rate , one out of five people that take advantage and benefit from the capital gains rate has an income below $ 50 , 000 . 
fifty-eight percent of the people that have a benefit from that have an income below $ 100 , 000 . 
the capital gains , i know these people , as other members do . 
the janitor at school who has figured out how his renters help him pay for two rental houses , and every time the pipes freeze , he is crawling under that rental house . 
it has depreciated down to where the value for tax purposes may not be very high , but it is everything that man or woman had been able to accumulate , and that person benefits greatly from this 15 percent rate . 
why raise that rate back ? 
why send a signal that that rate is going to go back ? 
the dividend tax , six times as many companies are paying dividends to people that own the company today as were paying dividends in just 2003 when we made that change . 
and the numbers are about the same . 
for the dividend rates , one out of four people that benefit from that tax make under $ 50 , 000 . 
fifty-nine percent of the people that benefit from that tax make under $ 100 , 000 . 
those are the same people that on this floor yesterday we talked about how important it was they not be negatively affected by the alternative minimum tax . 
i agree with that . 
so did everybody but four people on the floor of the house that voted yesterday . 
i agree that we ought to continue these tax policies that are working for america . 
that means we need to reject the substitute , even a substitute from my good friend ( mr. rangel ) xz4003330 , and move to the underlying bill and keep this economy growing . 
