Congressional Budget for the United States Government for Fiscal Year 2010

Floor Speech

CONGRESSIONAL BUDGET FOR THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT FOR FISCAL YEAR 2010 -- (Senate - April 01, 2009)

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Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I appreciate the new moniker the distinguished chairman of the Budget Committee is trying to confer on me, but I would say it is not warranted for a number of reasons. The chairman has a great sense of humor, which I appreciate sometimes and not as much on other occasions.

AMENDMENT NO. 806

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to set aside the pending amendment and to call up my amendment No. 806 and ask for its immediate consideration.

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Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, my colleagues, when they listen to what my amendment does, are going to experience a sense of deja vu. As the chairman says, we have been here before. As a matter of fact, 2 years ago, when I offered this amendment, which would create a budget point of order requiring 60 votes for any legislation that would raise taxes on small businesses--a couple years ago--we got 63 votes for that amendment, including these Democrats, as shown on this chart, folks on the other side of the aisle, making this a truly bipartisan proposal. Two years ago, when we had the same amendment offered, we had a little bit different group, but 58 Senators, representing a bipartisan majority of the Senate, believed it was a correct move to limit this Congress's ability to raise taxes on small businesses.

I know the chairman has raised this issue of corrosive but not fatal to the privileged status of the budget resolution, and I have some answers. We have corresponded with the Parliamentarian, and he has been good to give us some guidance, and I think there is a pathway for us to move forward for the conference committee to consider this amendment and to perhaps modify it in the conference and yet sustain its viability as a budget point of order for a tax increase on small businesses.

Why are we focusing on small businesses? Well, almost 400,000 small businesses in Texas, my State, employ about 4 million people. Frankly, as the chief job-creation engine of our country, small businesses disproportionately add to the job creation in our country, and I think it would do nothing but destroy or certainly impair their ability to continue to create jobs in this country by raising taxes on small businesses. So I think it is appropriate, before we do, that we have an extra hurdle--at least 60 votes--to waive any budget point of order to make us consider the seriousness of our decision and also the ramifications of any tax increase on small businesses.

Last month, I visited Tyler, TX. That is in East Texas, a midsized city of over 100,000 people, where I had the chance to sit down and visit with local business leaders, community leaders, about how the economy is going, unemployment rates--the things we could do here in Washington to perhaps make those businesses' job-creation capability a little easier.

I met with Don Thedford, who 30 years ago opened a business called Don's TV and Appliance. He did that 30 years ago with just one other employee; in other words, there were just two of them. Today, Don's business has 50 employees who sell and service appliances and electronics.

Don was able to grow his business early in this decade in part because of the tax relief we passed in 2001 and 2003. Since 2000, Don has hired eight additional workers to install and deliver appliances, seven more service technicians, six more clerical workers, four more sales people, and two more in management. So this is the kind of job creation we love to see: 30 years ago, two people; now 50 people working productively in this small business. Don has also added a new retirement plan for all of his employees, in addition to the health benefits he has offered to his employees for years.

As have many small businesses in this recession, he has seen his sales fall off. Of course, when families aren't buying and selling as many homes, there is less demand for appliances and electronics. Higher taxes would force Don, as well as other small businesses, to lay off some employees he has hired and scale back on some of the benefits he has offered, including health care.

We know more than half of the small businesses with 20 or more employees will get hit with a tax increase under President Obama's budget proposal. We also know, as I indicated earlier, small businesses create a majority of the net new jobs we have seen over the past decade, and two-thirds of those jobs were created by businesses similar to those that are now threatened by a proposed tax increase. Given the administration's stated goal and, indeed, our stated goal--I don't know any Member of the Senate who doesn't come to the floor and say we need to help our employers create and certainly, at least, retain the jobs they have in this down cycle--I am left wondering why anyone would oppose this budget point of order that would make it harder to raise taxes on small businesses because I know we all appreciate, intuitively and otherwise, that raising taxes on small businesses would be counterproductive to our ultimate goal of job creation.

I have said this every time I have offered this amendment--and now it is the third time--that this point of order is an insurance policy when Congress decides to look at the pocketbook of small business owners such as Don for more money instead of looking for ways to eliminate waste and fraud and abuse in Government programs. We know the Office of Management and Budget has reviewed more than 1,000 Government programs and found 20 percent of them to be nonperforming. Why don't we look for ways to save money by eliminating that waste and nonperforming programs as opposed to raising taxes on the chief job creators in our economy? Raising taxes before we eliminate wasteful spending or fix the ones that are broken is the wrong signal to our No. 1 job creators.

I share the chairman's concern, of course, about the debt. In fact, I offered an amendment in the Budget Committee that would have reduced it by more than $55 billion but, unfortunately, it was defeated by a party-line vote. But with concerns that families and small businesses have about the economy, now is not the time to increase taxes.

As former Chief Justice John Marshall noted, ``The power to tax is the power to destroy.'' We should not use this power to destroy small businesses such as Don's.

For this reason, I ask my colleagues once again to sign on to this amendment and to join me in voting with the same sort of bipartisan support that we have enjoyed the past two times this amendment has been offered and pass it as a statement of this body that we are going to be extra careful and take extra precautions and look for alternatives before we end up raising taxes on small businesses because that would be exactly the wrong prescription for what ails this economy.

Finally, let me say I know the concerns the Budget chairman, the bill manager, has on the privileged nature of this budget resolution. But I suggest to him that this is something that if the amendment is passed, he can take up, and the conference committee can take up and modify the amendment while retaining its essential core principles and eliminate the concerns the Parliamentarian has voiced about this being corrosive, if not fatal, to the privileged nature of the budget resolution.

So it is my hope, when we have an opportunity to vote on this, that we will get a strong bipartisan statement out of the Senate that we are not going to raise taxes on small businesses without at least the deliberation required and the overwhelming vote of 60 Senators to do so because it would be exactly the wrong thing to do in this economic downturn.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

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AMENDMENT NO. 806

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, there will now be 2 minutes of debate equally divided prior to a vote in relation to amendment No. 806, offered by the Senator from Texas, Mr. Cornyn.

The Senator from Texas is recognized.

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, my amendment creates a 60-vote point of order against legislation that will raise income taxes on small businesses. This is the third year in a row that I have offered this amendment. Previously, it has received as many as 63 votes. Last year, it got 58 votes, but it nevertheless was a strong bipartisan showing.

For my colleagues' information, the National Federation of Independent Business supports this because they recognize what we all know, and that is that small businesses are the economic engine that creates jobs. Particularly in a tough economy, exactly the wrong thing to do is to raise taxes on the job creators, our small businesses.

I urge my colleagues to support this amendment.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Dakota is recognized.

Mr. CONRAD. Mr. President, colleagues should know that the Parliamentarian has told us that if this amendment comes back from the conference committee, it would endanger the special privilege of a budget resolution. With that said, I intend to vote for it here in the Senate. I encourage colleagues to vote for it, if they are so inclined.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Texas.

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I understand what the chairman, Senator Conrad, has said. My hope is that the conference committee would not reflexively strip this amendment, if it passes by a large bipartisan majority, from the conference report but perhaps modify it in a way that it not render the budget resolution unprivileged.

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