Highway and Transportation Funding Act of 2015

Floor Speech

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Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. Speaker, we have a very sad state of affairs here. We know we have an urgent problem with respect to infrastructure around America. Our roads, our bridges, our transitways are in disrepair at a time when we should actually be investing more to modernize our American infrastructure so we can compete and put people back to work.

And yet what do we have from our Republican colleagues? More of the same. Five more months of inadequate funding, no certainty for people who need to plan for projects. People are going to face layoffs again. So we have an urgent problem, and the response we get from our Republican colleagues is 5 months of inadequate funding.

We have put forward a 6-year plan, the first 2 years fully funded of a more robust plan. How do we fund it? We fund it by saying ``no more'' to the companies, the American companies that are cheating the American taxpayers by inversion.

So what are they doing? They are simply changing their addresses to an overseas address so they don't have to pay any more into helping our infrastructure and helping our country.

Let me give you an example of what these companies are doing. They are not moving their employees. They are not moving their management. They are not moving their factories or anything else. They are just changing their mailing address by acquiring a small foreign company and, in doing so, saying: We are not going to pay any more of our taxes.

So to the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, I think most Americans would disagree with you that we need more time. We don't need 5 more months to figure out that these corporations are cheating, as taxpayers, by using these special provisions. We can close this tax loophole right now. In fact, about 30 of these companies have inverted in the last 5 years.

So we want to wait another 5 months and allow 5, 10 more to use this tax device to escape their responsibilities to the American taxpayer? Why should we do that?

Let's do the right thing, and let's do it right now. We have that within our power. That is what the legislation that we have put forward is all about. Let's invest in our national infrastructure, and let's use it by getting the savings from these companies that are engaging in these inversion tax practices.

I am pleased to yield the remainder of my time to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Israel).

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