Tax Relief Act of 2005
TAX RELIEF ACT OF 2005
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. DeWINE. Mr. President, 15 million persons with disabilities are unemployed and actively seeking employment. There simply has been no measurable change in the unemployment situation for persons with disabilities since the American's with Disabilities Act. That is unacceptable. It is wrong. It is something we have to change. We can do better, and we have to do better.
Senator Nelson from Nebraska and I have an amendment that will do just that. Our amendment would establish a preference under the debt collection contracting program for contractors who hire people with disabilities and disabled veterans.
This amendment would require that at least a specified percentage of the individuals employed by the contractor to provide debt collection services qualify as people with disabilities or disabled veterans.
A provision of the American Jobs Creation Act of 2004 authorized the Internal Revenue Service to contract with private collection agencies to collect certain past due income taxes. If the same tax collection activities were still conducted by Federal employees, current law would give employment preferences to disabled veterans in filling those Federal jobs. In addition, if other persons with disabilities were employed by the Federal Government in those jobs, they would benefit from the Federal Government's long history of promoting job opportunities for people with disabilities.
By enacting legislation to privatize debt collection and improve the IRS' tax collection efforts, Congress certainly did not intend to curtail the Government's commitment to creating meaningful job opportunities for people with disabilities and disabled veterans. So I urge my fellow Senators to support this amendment. Again, there are 15 million persons with disabilities who are unemployed and actively seeking employment. We have an opportunity now to help put them back to work.
BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT
Mr. DeWINE. Mr. President, there are 15 million people with disabilities who are unemployed in this country. This amendment will help in a small way to deal with that problem.
http://thomas.loc.gov/