mr. speaker , i thank the gentleman for yielding me time .  i rise to support the underlying bill and to oppose the democratic substitute .  the numbers three , four , and five come to mind .  three is basically a reflection of what our inflation rate is at ; four for the percentage of which our economy is growing on an annual basis ; and five for unemployment rate that exists in this country with historic lows .  one way we can ensure that that number five comes even lower and that number four goes even higher is to support the underlying legislation .  why ?  because it is proven to work .  when you reduce the taxes and the penalties on the accumulation of capital , what we see is an economy that grows .  so whether you are a small business owner in staten island or a small business owner in san francisco , you are able to put more people to work and we watch our economy grow and grow and grow .  my concern with the democratic substitute is multi-fold .  one is if you are sitting at home , for example , and you are waiting for your retirement , and in several years when your nest egg is about a half a million dollars , which is not that much money anymore for some folks i know living across the country , if the democratic substitute prevails , you are looking at basically sending another check for $ 25 , 000 to the federal government .  that is if you support the substitute .  in addition , if you happen to be receiving dividends , and i know many people across the country in so-called investor class receive dividends on a regular basis , if the democratic substitute prevails , you will be paying upwards of 20 percent more in taxes to the federal government .  not to mention the fact that the amt , which penalizes upwards of 80 percent of the people i know who filed in staten island and brooklyn , are getting punished by the amt , the democratic substitute does not adequately address what the house passed yesterday .  in conclusion , if we are for a pro-growth economy , if we are for bringing the unemployment rate down even further , if we are watching for our economy to grow even greater , if we are basically placing our faith in the american people and the entrepreneurs and the small business owners across country , let us not punish them with higher capital gains rates and dividend rates .  