Service Members Home Ownership Tax Act Of 2009
Floor Speech
SERVICE MEMBERS HOME OWNERSHIP TAX ACT OF 2009 -- (Senate - December 10, 2009)
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Mr. THUNE. I ask my colleague from Arizona if this is what happens when you end up with one-party rule, one party trying to go this on their own. This seems to be a model of dysfunction in how to come up with a solution to one of the major problems facing the American people, dysfunctional by Washington's twisted standards. They seem to be desperately throwing things at the wall, hoping something will stick. Surely, there has to be a better suggestion coming from the other side than to expand a program that is destined to be bankrupt in the year 2017. It is the equivalent of a ship that is sinking. It is similar to the Titanic. You will put more people on the deck of a sinking ship. Clearly, the overall objective, at least among some, and I think some have been very transparent about it--someone quoted earlier today the Congressman from New York in the other body who said this is the mother of all public options. He went on to say:
Never mind the camel's nose. We have his head and neck in the tent on the way to a single-payer system.
Obviously, there are people here who want to see a single-payer system, who want to see government-run health care. We don't happen to believe that is the best solution for America's health care system, but the amazing thing about this proposal is, it takes a program that is destined to be bankrupt in a few short years, cuts $1 trillion out of it over 10 years, when fully implemented, and then adds millions of new people into that program. It is hard to come up with any rational explanation for what is going on here, other than that they are left with, in desperation, trying to throw something at the wall, hoping it will stick. Is this typically what happens around here when one party tries to go on its own on something that is this consequential to America? One-sixth of our economy is represented by health care.
Essentially, what they are saying is, we want to expand that part of the economy that isn't working today, that is headed for bankruptcy, that underreimburses doctors and hospitals, put more money into that failed system, exacerbate the cost-shift problem by forcing people in the private-payer market to pay higher premiums. It seems like this creates all sorts of problems that make matters even worse.
I appreciate my colleague's leadership on this issue of pointing out what inevitably is going to happen. When you have the Washington Post editorial this morning even acknowledging the terrible problems this creates for health care and the way this is being conducted, sausage being made here in Washington, DC. Even by Washington's twisted standards, this process has become so dysfunctional, I don't know how they can recover.
One thing they could do is decide to sit down with Republicans and actually figure out some things we could do that would drive health care costs down, rather than making them go up.
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Mr. THUNE. I say to my colleague from Idaho that I support his motion. I hope we get a chance to vote on it. I know right now they are scrambling to find an alternative to put up so they can have something on which to give their side political cover because they know the reason they are trying so hard is because they know this raises taxes. To say with a straight face this does not raise taxes--the American people get this. I think the gig is up. They figured out there are huge Medicare cuts in this bill, huge tax increases in this bill. And as the Senator from Idaho pointed out, when they say these refundable tax credits are going to go back in the form of premium subsidies and there are not that many people who are going to pay, as he pointed out, 73 percent of the people who will get those premium subsidies are people who do not have an income tax liability already. Therefore, it is hard to say you are going to reduce taxes on somebody who does not have an income tax liability.
More important than that, there are still 42 million Americans with incomes under $200,000 a year, according to the Joint Tax Committee, who are going to see their taxes go up under this bill. So you literally have millions and millions of Americans under $200,000 a year. And as the Senator from Idaho mentioned, the President's promise was he would not raise taxes on anybody earning under $250,000 a year. This flatly contradicts that, flatly violates that pledge. I cannot fathom anybody coming here with a straight face and saying: Oh, yes, this doesn't raise taxes. Of course it raises taxes.
What the Senator from Texas and I intend to do on our motion--and I hope we have a chance to vote on it and the Senator's motion--we will go back to the committee and figure this out. We want to offer a motion that we think makes sense because it aligns and synchronizes the dates of all this.
What has happened here, I would say, in a very deceptive way, is they understated the costs of the bill. My colleagues on the floor already alluded to this. They tried to get it under $1 trillion, and in attempt to get it under $1 trillion, they had to come up with budget gimmicks.
To illustrate that with a bar chart, we can see in the first 10 years of this bill--starting today and going to 2019--the spending in the early years does not show up much. That is because most of the spending gets put off until January 1, 2014.
So if we look at that first 10-year period, the spending under the bill is less than it will be when the bill is fully implemented. When the bill is fully implemented, looking at the years 2014 to 2023, it explodes the spending in the bill from about $1 trillion over the first 10 years to $2.5 trillion over the 10 years when it is fully implemented.
The reason they were able to do that is because of this sort of smoke-and-mirrors way of enacting the tax increases immediately and delaying the spending. The American people are going to end up spending $71 billion in tax increases out of their pockets, out of the American taxpayers' pockets, about $600 per taxpayer, before they ever see a benefit under this bill.
What the Senator from Texas, Mrs. Hutchison, and I are offering is a motion that would delay the tax increases until such time as the benefits begin. That, to me, seems to be a fair way to go about making public policy.
What they have done, in an effort to obscure the overall cost of this bill, is to say that 22 days from now, we are going to raise your taxes. On January 1 of this year is when most of these taxes--the taxes on prescription drugs, taxes on medical devices, taxes on health plans--all the taxes in the bill begin to take effect January 1 of next year. For 4 years, people will be paying taxes out of their pockets. I might add, because of the taxes that are going to go on all the device manufacturers, prescription drugs, and health plans, they will get passed on in the form of higher premiums. They are going to see tax increases and premium increases before they ever see a dollar of benefits.
It is 1,483 days until the benefits under this bill kick in. That is unfair. It is unfair to the American taxpayer, it is unfair to the American people, and it is unfair to try to obscure and mask the total cost of this bill and say we are only spending $1 trillion on this bill when we know full well when it is fully implemented, the total cost of that is $2.5 trillion.
I appreciate the discussion that is being held here in pointing out the smoke and mirrors, the sort of underhanded way to try to shield the cost of this bill but also to support the Senator from Idaho with his motion that would commit this bill and get these tax increases out of here because the one thing small businesses are saying right now is we want to invest, we want to create jobs. But you cannot raise taxes on small businesses when you want them to create jobs. That is what this bill does.
The National Federation of Independent Business, the Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Wholesalers and Distributors--all the major business organizations--have come out opposed to this bill.
The National Federation of Independent Business in a letter yesterday said: We do not support policies that increase the cost of doing business and that raise taxes. Clearly, that is what this bill does.
Our motion is very simple; that is, it simply delays tax increases until such time as the benefits begin.
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