Federal Disaster Tax Relief Act of 2023

Floor Speech

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in strong support of this legislation, and I thank Chairman Smith of the Ways and Means Committee for all the good work he has done to ensure that we are able to help our constituents who are suffering as a result of natural disasters. I also thank my colleague and friend, Mr. Steube, without whose leadership on the Ways and Means Committee we wouldn't be here today. I also thank Mr. LaMalfa, my colleague to the north of my district, who has worked with me over the years to address one component that is covered by this piece of legislation.

This has been a long time coming for my constituents--too long, way too long. This is now the second time in 5 months that this House has come together to state plainly and in a bipartisan fashion that Americans should help one another when disaster strikes, while the Senate continues to play politics with what ought to be a bipartisan victory. They have been sitting on the tax bill for 5 months. I join Chairman Smith in calling for them to move the entire bill because there is so much in it for so many of our constituents across the country.

I want to briefly reiterate how we got here today. In my district, wildfires in 2015, 2017, and 2018 devastated entire communities across my district and across the State of California. Entire towns were destroyed. Thousands of people lost homes, and dozens of people lost their lives.

In the aftermath, the courts found that Pacific Gas and Electric was liable for causing some of these fires. As part of its subsequent bankruptcy proceedings, the utility established a trust from which fire survivors are generally eligible for compensation for losses sustained during these fires.

Let me pause here to say one thing. No disaster survivor is ever made whole. No one is ever made whole. People lost their homes and everything in their homes--family pictures, family heirlooms, family records. They lost businesses. As I said earlier, sadly, they lost family members.

While the courts eventually created a path to compensation, it took years to get there, years my constituents didn't have. They couldn't wait around for 3, 4, 6 years to get a payment from that trust. Then, because the trust was structured in the form of stock shares and because stock shares need to be monetized carefully and slowly in order to maximize return to survivors, the payments to survivors came in batches. Nobody is getting--repeat, nobody is getting--100 percent of what they lost.

To add insult to injury, right as our constituents started to get a little bit of compensation, our constituents were told they may actually owe taxes on these payments because, depending on the taxpayer, the payments may qualify as income. In 4 years of working on this issue, I have yet to encounter a single person on either side of the aisle who believes this is fair. That is why we have been so successful in passing this legislation numerous times out of the Ways and Means Committee and off the floor of this House.

This bill has been stalled, advanced, and then held up. It has been marked up, passed the House, and stalled again. The Senate ought to quit dithering on what is an objectively good bill for our country and just pass it, but because they are unwilling to do so, we are here again tonight to take this matter up.

As I said, I am grateful to my colleagues on both sides of the aisle. Mr. Neal, our ranking member on Ways and Means, has been a great colleague and a great champion for this. I also thank the chairman, Mr. Smith, and Mr. Steube, one of our colleagues on the committee.

I wish such an unusual strategy to get here wasn't necessary, but I am committed--and I think my colleagues here are committed--to pulling every lever at our disposal to get this bill passed. This is a fundamental question of fairness, and I urge all of my colleagues to vote in favor of this bill.

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Mr. THOMPSON of California. Tokuda), who knows firsthand the tragedy of wildfire.

Her constituents experienced a horrific disaster in her district, in her home State, and she has been there with them every step of the way. She is here on their behalf again tonight. I thank her for her support.

Again, I thank Mr. Steube, Mr. LaMalfa, Chairman Smith, and all of our colleagues on Ways and Means who worked so hard to bring this bill to fruition not once, not twice, but now three times.

I know how difficult it is for our friend from Hawaii, in her area. What a devastating fire that was, and I know how hard she is working for her constituents. I thank her for being on the floor today.

Mr. Speaker, Florida, Texas, South Carolina, Louisiana, Kentucky, Oregon, New York, California, and over a dozen other States have been devastated by disasters. There is not a single colleague in this House who should have to go through a disaster to know how bad it is. It devastates communities. It devastates people's lives. It disrupts communities. It disrupts people's lives. People are killed. Businesses are lost. Homes and heirlooms are lost and destroyed.

The least that we can do is to come to the aid of our constituents, our fellow Americans, in time of disaster and in time of great need. That is what we are doing today.

This is commendable work by the Ways and Means Committee, and every Member of this House should be proud to come to the floor and vote to support their friends, their neighbors, and their constituents in these very dark times.

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