Free Flow of Information Act of 2007 - Motion to Proceed - Continued
Floor Speech
FREE FLOW OF INFORMATION ACT OF 2007--MOTION TO PROCEED--Continued -- (Senate - July 30, 2008)
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TAX EXTENDERS
Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, we finished a fourth vote on the tax extenders bill. As the great baseball philosopher, Yogi Berra, said: ``It's deja vu all over again.''
Here we are getting ready to vote and just finishing a vote for the fourth time on the motion to proceed to the House tax extenders bill. As I said, it is deja vu all over again and yet again.
The vote, I believe, was 51 to 43, so very short of what it takes to get business done in the Senate, which is to work a bipartisan agreement so we have more than 60 votes to get business done. This is a no-brainer, in this particular instance, to get an extenders bill and the AMT.
The futility of this exercise, which is motivated purely by partisan politics, makes this vote as silly as a ``Three Stooges'' episode. Instead of wasting time on such a silly exercise, the Senate Democratic leadership should be working on negotiating a bipartisan deal with Senate Republicans that can be signed into law by the President. The American people do not want another futile vote on tax extenders. They want a bill that will be signed into law. That would provide the American people with the tax relief that is needed.
The extenders vote we had has already failed before. Albert Einstein famously stated the definition of ``insanity'' is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. The Senate Democratic leadership has already done the same thing too many times and, of course, today sought to do it again. This is a waste of everyone's time. Everyone can see through the Democratic leadership's strategy for what it is: a partisan political exercise, designed solely to get 30-second sound bites for political ads.
Let's stop this nonsense. Let's work out a bipartisan compromise on the tax extenders bill. Let's reach agreement in a form that can be signed into law by the President. The President made it very clear today that he is not willing to sign what we had before us a few minutes ago into law. Of course, what I am asking is that the Senate Republican leadership has been trying to urge the Senate majority to move in this direction.
The Senate Republican leadership has made numerous offers to the Senate Democratic leadership to try to find a way to break the logjam on tax extenders. So far, our colleagues on the other side of the aisle have been unwilling to enter into a bipartisan agreement on a tax extenders bill that even attempts to address legitimate concerns of the minority party in this body.
As the Senate Democratic leadership engages in pure partisan politics by bringing up the tax extenders bill for yet another vote, the chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee is probably grinning like a Cheshire cat, thinking of all the 30-second campaign ads they will be able to make. However, the people of New York are not grinning because they are not getting the benefit of any of these tax relief provisions. All the tax relief provisions that are very important to the American people, including even to the people of New York, are being held hostage as part of the political game of the Democratic Senate leadership having vote after vote on cloture to stop debate for whatever reason.
Some of these important tax relief provisions are the alternative minimum tax patch, the deduction for the State and local sales tax, the deduction of tuition expenses, and the deduction for expenses of school teachers. How is anybody going to find fault with the fact that these provisions should have been done a long time ago? In fact, the AMT patch should have been done because, since the first of the year, taxpayers who have had to file quarterly tax payments have been violating the law if they haven't taken into consideration that there are 24 million American families right now hit by the alternative minimum tax. That figure would include 3.1 million New York families. The provision for the State and local sales tax would help almost 11 million families. Also, the deduction for expenses for tuition and fees would help over 4.6 million families. In addition, the deduction for expenses of school teachers would help 3.4 million Americans. These hard-working taxpayers are more important than a 30-second sound bite to be used in the next campaign because of political games that are being played.
The bottom line is, when we have 24 million people being hit by AMT, 4.6 million people on the deduction of college expenses, and 3.4 million people hit by increased taxes because school teachers will not be able to deduct supplies from their income taxes, real Americans are being hurt while political games are being played, when everybody in this body knows the only way we get things done is in a bipartisan way.
The biggest divide between Republicans and Democrats regarding tax extenders relates to the issue of offsets, also known as revenue raisers, or I think we ought to be more intellectually honest and call these tax increases. In other words, tax increases on Americans generally to provide the extension of some policy that has been on the books for decades.
My party's position has been clear on this issue. We are perfectly willing to use offsets that make sense from a tax policy perspective to pay for new tax policy. However, tax relief provided by extending existing tax policy or expiring provisions, or somebody may call these sunset provisions, we do not feel they should have to be offset. We should not be raising taxes in order to pay for the extension of existing tax policy.
One reason I care about this issue is that there is currently a bias in favor of using this as an excuse to bring in more money to increase the size of Government. The pay-as-you-go rules apply to expiring tax provisions which are not built into the revenue base. On the other hand, if you have sunset of appropriations, these are built into the spending baseline. Therefore, in order to extend expiring tax provisions, the pay-go rules require an offset, and that happens to be a big tax increase. Whereas, if you have extensions of expiring appropriations provisions--in other words, spending provisions--they do not need to be paid for by decreased spending in other areas because they are assumed in the spending baseline. Therefore, pay-as-you-go rules apply to the extension of expiring tax provisions, but in an intellectually, inconsistent way do not apply to the extension of expiring spending provisions.
This inconsistent treatment makes no sense--intellectually inconsistent; I say to the taxpayers of America, intellectually dishonest. It is biased to create ever larger Government. The money the American people earn, after all, is their money. We should only take the money from them that it truly takes to run the Government. We should not be using sunset tax provisions as an excuse to increase taxes, and that is all it is.
In addition, the Democrats' desire to use permanent offsets to pay for an extension of temporary tax provisions is extremely problematic. It creates a situation where the permanent offsets that can be agreed to on a bipartisan basis--in other words, the low-hanging fruit all gets used to pay for the extension of temporary tax provisions.
Under the Democrats' tax side only, pay-go obsession, once all the low-hanging fruit is used--and we are rapidly approaching that point--then the choice becomes much uglier for them and much uglier for the American taxpayers. The choice becomes whether to extend existing tax policy that has broad support by increasing taxes in areas that will hurt Americans.
Nobody advocates the inconsistency of the pay-as-you-go rules more than the famed House of Representatives Blue Dogs, and they are all Democrats. The Blue Dogs portray themselves as fiscal conservatives. We agree with the Blue Dogs' goals of fiscal responsibility. They will have allies all over my side of the aisle if they want to control spending. The problem is the Blue Dogs are pursuing the same old tax-and-spend game under the cloak of fiscal responsibility. The Blue Dogs will fight tooth and paw over any tax relief that is not offset with a corresponding tax increase.
However, the same self-described fiscally conservative Blue Dogs are not willing to fight tooth and paw to seek the same equality for the taxpayers on the spending side of the ledger. They have a big appetite for spending. The Blue Dogs generally do not seek to offset spending increases with spending cuts in other areas. But in taxes, it is a whole different story. In fact, the Blue Dogs do not even seek to curb the amount of spending increases for which they hunger.
By portraying themselves as fiscal conservatives, while in reality playing the same old tax-and-spend game, the Blue Dogs remind me of the land shark character played by Chevy Chase on ``Saturday Night Live.'' This was many years ago, so maybe some of you will not remember. But we have a picture of the land shark skit with the theme from ``Jaws'' playing in the background.
The land shark knocks on a person's door. With the door still closed, the person would ask: Who is at the door?
The land shark would reply: Flower delivery.
The person answering the door then said: You are that clever shark, aren't you?
And in response, the land shark said: Candygram.
If you don't know how the skit ended, the person eventually let the land shark in the door because that person believed the land shark when the land shark said he was a dolphin. And, yes, the land shark ate that person.
The moral of the land shark story is, don't let yourself be fooled that the Blue Dogs are fiscal conservatives because they are pursuing the same old tax-and-spend Washington game. Don't let the House of Representatives Blue Dogs' insatiable appetite for spending swallow the much-needed tax relief contained in the tax extenders.
I recommend that folks take a look at the cover story of the June 14, 2008, edition of the National Journal magazine about the Blue Dogs. It is very enlightening.
In trying to reach a bipartisan agreement on tax extenders, my party's leadership has made several offers to the other side's leadership. One of these offers is to pay for some new tax policy using offsets that make good tax policy sense. This is not simply a vague promise to look for such offsets. For instance, I have suggested we use the offset that closes the loophole that allows hedge fund managers to defer compensation for tax haven jurisdictions.
My time is up.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent for 4 more minutes.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. GRASSLEY. I thank the Chair.
So we have offered something like closing a loophole that allows hedge fund managers to defer compensation in tax haven jurisdictions. However, we need to remove the huge charitable loophole that is contained in both the Democratic House and Senate extenders bill.
Let me try to explain something that is not explainable. I would be embarrassed if I had this in one of my bills. This charitable loophole allows hedge fund managers to deduct 100 percent of their deferred compensation that is donated to charity. In contrast, the ordinary American is only permitted to deduct charitable contributions of up to 50 percent of his or her income for that year. Everyone is obviously in favor of charity, but treating wealthy hedge fund managers better than the average American taxpayer makes no sense from a tax policy standpoint.
Also, the Senate Republican leadership suggested that some of the other new tax policy could be paid for by decreasing the scheduled increase in new spending, but that was not taken into consideration, even considering the fact that the present budget authorizes an increase greater than $350 billion over the next 10 years, and none of that is offset.
This extra $350 billion is like an extra checkbook that Congress is carrying around in addition to its already fat checkbook. This checkbook covers nondiscretionary spending and current levels of discretionary spending. We simply asked that they take a few checks out of this extra checkbook--not all of it, just a small part of it--to pay for some of these needed tax relief provisions. However, this suggestion was summarily dismissed.
My colleagues on the other side of the aisle are unwilling to even consider decreasing their increased nondefense discretionary spending that is above the President's budget. If the Blue Dogs of the other body are fiscal conservatives, they should come out and say they are willing to decrease this increase in the new extra nondefense discretionary spending. Instead, the Blue Dogs' position has been that all of the tax relief provided in the tax extenders package, even the extension of the existing tax policy, must be offset by an equal amount of tax increases on every other American. Why not look at curbing this new excess spending to pay for part of the much needed tax relief? So let us get back to square one. I invite my Blue Dog friends who claim to be fiscal conservatives to answer that question.
Back to where we started today--back to Yogi Berra. He also said: ``It ain't over 'til it's over.'' This extenders vote failed because our colleagues on the other side of the aisle have refused to negotiate toward a bipartisan bill that can be signed into law. Because of the Senate Democratic leadership's doomed plan, this extenders discussion ``ain't over 'til it's over.'' Let's get this over with. Let's negotiate toward a bipartisan agreement that can become law so the American people will benefit. So far, the Senate Democratic leadership has not done that. For that reason alone, people did vote ``no'' on cloture, as they previously had.
Mr. President, I yield the floor, and I thank the Senator from Ohio for allowing me the additional 4 minutes.
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