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 )  , and move to the underlying bill and keep this economy growing .  