mr. speaker , i rise in strong support of this rule , and i thank and congratulate my great friend from florida , such a hardworking member of the rules committee , and i thank all those involved in this effort , which i hope at the end of the day will be bipartisan .  because we all know that of that proverbial saying that everyone is entitled to their own opinion but not their own facts .  as i listened to the pathetic , and that is really the only way you can describe it , the pathetic old class warfare , us versus them argument , cleaning yachts and mowing lawns and all this stuff .  the facts are 56.9 million american families , 56.9 million american families , nearly 60 percent of american families are members of the investor class .  the investor class , people who have some kind of investment .  and , mr. speaker , 30 percent , 30 percent of the members of the investor class earn less than i will tell you that if you look at the arguments that were made , and i listened to my good friend from rochester , ms. slaughter , in her opening statement in which she talked about investing in all these important things , of course we all want to invest in the future .  but she said , do not invest in the rich .  well , the fact of the matter is we are encouraging investment with this because we want to do everything we possibly can to make sure that those people who are out there creating jobs have the incentive to do that .  and we also need to look at long-term planning .  people can stand up and malign the dividend cuts and the capital gains cuts , but i actually believe we should have no tax on capital gains at all .  it is a double tax and , frankly , it discourages growth .  i will never forget a few years ago visiting new zealand , which is certainly a left of center government .  the prime minister there , prime minister clark , well , let us just say she is not what you would call center right .  but i met with a number of people in new zealand , and i raised with them the prospect of establishing a capital gains .  they have zero capital gains there .  they said that they did a study in new zealand and found that the mere establishment of a capital gains tax would be devastating to the economy of new zealand .  and all we are saying is we should allow people for another couple of years to plan at a 15 percent capital gains rate .  mr. speaker , we know , as we look at the arguments that were provided in 2001 , 2002 , 2003 , that our wonderful colleagues on the other side of the aisle regularly said the following things : number one , if you put into place these tax cuts , the economy is going to head straight into the tank .  and i listened to my friend from oregon go through the herbert hoover argument , and i thought we had sort of beaten that one back in the 2004 campaign when in the last 3 years we have seen the creation of 4 1/2 million jobs under the payroll survey guideline and 5 million jobs under the household survey guideline .  i thought we had pretty much beaten that argument back , but obviously , they are continuing to try and dredge this up .  they said that if we put into place this tax cut that the economy would go into the tank and the deficit would go sky high .  we know the exact opposite has been the case .  we , in fact , have had a reduction of $ 94 billion in the deficit simply because of economic growth , simply because of the enhanced flow of revenues to come into the federal treasury .  now , obviously , we are not going to see probably the best improvement in the deficit number next year because of hurricane katrina and other costs that we have faced , and we are doing everything we can , so many of us , to try to rein in mandatory spending with the reconciliation process we have gone through , and to try to do what we can on both discretionary as well as mandatory , as i said .  but the fact of the matter is , mr. speaker , the single most important thing that we can do to deal with the challenges of investing in all those things that ms. slaughter  mentioned , is to make sure that the economy continues to grow .  i can think of nothing , nothing worse for the potential future growth of our economy than to not pass this measure .  so if you believe in bringing unemployment down even further , if you believe in seeing the already record level of minority home ownership go even higher , if you believe in enhanced productivity and incentives for that , it is absolutely essential that this rule and this legislation be passed .  so i commend it to my colleagues .  the tired old arguments of the past are not carrying any weight at all with the american people , i am happy to say .  they get it .  they understand it .  so that is why we should have democrats join with republicans in doing the right thing here .  