Providing for Disposition of Unused Health Benfits in Cafeteria Plans and Flexible Spending Arrangements

PROVIDING FOR DISPOSITION OF UNUSED HEALTH BENEFITS IN CAFETERIA PLANS AND FLEXIBLE SPENDING ARRANGEMENTS -- (House of Representatives - May 12, 2004)

Mr. DOGGETT. Mr. Speaker, I visited with a group of small business people from Texas this morning who came to discuss, among other things, their concerns about being able to provide health coverage for themselves and for their employees. Their stories were very similar to ones I have heard while visiting with small retailers in Phaw and in Mission, Texas, and in talking with musicians in Austin, Texas-that we have a growing crisis in this country in trying to ensure that working Americans can get the health protection and the health insurance access that they need.

As I talked with them, one of the concerns that I raised was this need versus another one that is also the tragic result of the misleadership of this administration and this Republican Congress. They are driving our country into an economic ditch with the largest deficit in the history of America last year, to be surpassed this year, and to be exceeded in the future under a broken economic scheme.

In fact, the deficits are rising at such a rate that our Republican colleagues are continually coming to ask for an increase in the debt ceiling. They will have to do it again in the very near future. I think they probably need to keep an extension ladder in this House so that they can continue raising the ceiling upward, up to what will become $10 trillion or $11 trillion. That is trillion with a "T" that they will be raising the debt ceiling to as a result of their misguided economic policies and their willingness to give tax break after tax break to those at the top of the economic ladder without paying for it. They get it for free.

Today, we have another example of that. We have an example of an unwillingness to consider the cost and the burden on future generations of Americans and the adverse effect on our economy of continuing to incur more and more debt, as has been true in the past, by adding more and more tax breaks.

So we have come forward with a substitute and said that if you are going to make these changes-even though this is probably not the most efficient way to deliver health care and there are much preferable approaches-but if you are going to
do this, at least pay for it. Do not add more and more to the national debt.

And we have done it in very reasonable ways. One is to deal with something that Republicans in this House would like to forget about as just ancient history: the scandal called Enron, the scandal that led to so much trouble for our economy and to a reduction in the public's confidence in our economic marketplace.

Enron manipulated our tax laws. In fact, as The Washington Post reported last year, Enron was turning its tax department into a profit center. Its senior executives, along with leading accounting, banking, and legal advisers were seeking to manipulate tax laws through complex concealed transactions. These were transactions that involved things like synthetic leases. These were transactions that, as one of their people reported, were so intentionally complicated it would take a year or more to construct a single deal.

Well, we have adopted in this substitute very modest proposals, recommended by the Joint Committee on Taxation and approved overwhelmingly in the United States Senate, to do something about those Enron tax abuses. What has the House of Representatives done in the two years since these abuses were disclosed? Absolutely nothing. The Senate was willing to look at the tax returns of Enron to see how these manipulations occurred, but the House Committee on Ways and Means was afraid to look under that rock because it knew the scandal it would find. They have been unwilling to address this problem.

The same is true of the unpatriotic corporations that retreat to Bermuda or Barbados, who basically say that they do not want to pay their fair share of our homeland security and defense. Oh, yes, they are proud of our flag when they want our fighting men and women defending their position. They are so proud of our flag when they are being defended by our Armed Forces. They are so proud of our flag when they want to do business with the United States Government.

Some of these same unpatriotic corporations come and ask for hundreds of millions of tax dollars in government contracts.
In fact, one contracts with the Internal Revenue Service. Another one contracts with the Department of Homeland Security.
On the one hand they will not pay their fair share of taxes, but they sure want all the tax money they can get in contracts with the government.

We have a proposal to pay for health care through reforms to prevent another Enron scandal and through reforms that simply ask for a level playing field. Those corporations that want the protection of the American flag ought to be willing to pay their fair share.

The Committee on Ways and Means and the Republican leadership in the House will never make these needed changes unless they are forced to do it through proposals just like this. They feel so comfortable with the Enron philosophy that a tax department is a profit center that they will continue to defend these abuses.

I ask your support for the substitute.