Middle Class Health Benefits Tax Repeal Act of 2019

Floor Speech

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Mr. SMITH of Nebraska. Mr. Speaker, I did not come to the U.S. House of Representatives to vote for stimulus packages or bailouts.

I didn't come here to spend trillions of dollars or grow the size of government.

However, the situation we are in today, in the United States and across the world, is different.

We aren't in this situation because we've come to the end of a business cycle.

We aren't here because mortgage lenders or Wall Street made bad decisions.

We are here because our economy, with the help of regulatory and tax relief, was going strong, and we want to resume that strength when conditions permit.

Three million Americans applied for unemployment benefits last week, not because the fundamentals of our economy changed, but because President Trump, and governors and mayors across our country, asked them to stay home as much as possible for a while, to help protect their families, friends, and neighbors.

We should all be proud of how well most Americans have heeded that request.

We owe Americans the opportunity to resume their lives, return to their jobs, resume their education, keep their homes, and feed their families just as they were before this pandemic arrived, and this bill addresses many barriers to that happening.

Employers don't want to shut down and lay employees off. This bill will help many avoid having to.

Americans want to work and support their families. The short-term changes to unemployment help those who don't currently have that choice.

This bill also ensures our commercial aviation system, including the contractors who support it, which were strong prior to this pandemic, can resume serving our nation, including its most rural parts, when this pandemic ends.

Hospitals want to be there for everyone in their community. Provisions like the enhanced advance-pay assistance will help the 55 critical-access hospitals in Nebraska keep their doors open as they pause addressing less immediate needs, and expanded telehealth availability will benefit rural Americans even after this crisis is over.

And provisions such as funding for the Commodity Credit Corporation will help our ag producers get through this difficult time and continue to feed Americans, who more than ever are understanding the complexity and reliability of our food production system, from farm to table.

Mr. Speaker, this is not the bill any single one of us would have written on our own, but I will support it today because it is a strong compromise which provides our best available opportunity to help Americans get through this difficult period and return to their jobs, schools, churches, friends, and regular daily lives in the shortest time possible.

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