Jobs Legislation

Floor Speech

Mr. GRASSLEY. Madam President, I yield myself such time as I may consume. I rise to address the jobs issue and the bill before the Senate. Part of it is to show to my fellow Senators and the American people that the Democratic leadership has a different view on this bill before us that is a partisan bill, particularly in regard to the absence of tax extenders being in that bill, compared to what they have over several of the recent years, which was very supportive of these tax provisions that are left out of this bill. I will explain it this way.

Although the Senate Democratic leader was highly involved in the development of the bipartisan bill, he arbitrarily decided to replace it with a bill now being jammed through the Senate. From the start, this was something Senator Baucus and I were working on with both leaders of the Senate. Somehow, that didn't seem to work in the end, as we thought it was working very well as we were moving along. As much as I was surprised by the Democratic leader's disregard for bipartisanship, I am even more surprised by the explanation given by him and his people who speak for him.

Perhaps the most significant change between the bipartisan package Chairman Baucus and I helped put together and the package we voted to move to is the package of expired tax provisions has been removed. These expired tax provisions are the ones I referred to as tax extenders. These generally very popular and certainly bipartisan tax extender provisions have, in fact, been extended several times over the past few years. What is surprising is that hyperpartisan members of the majority have suddenly somehow decided tax extenders are what they refer to as ``partisan pork for Republicans.'' A representative sample comes from one report which describes the bipartisan bill as ``an extension of soon-to-expire tax breaks that are highly beneficial to major corporations, known as tax extenders, as well as other corporate giveaways that have been designed to win GOP support.'' Like this is something that only Republicans have ever been for or it is just for major corporations.

There is another quote in the Washington Post which includes this attribution to the Senate Democratic leadership:

``We're pretty close,'' [the majority leader] said Friday during a television appearance in Nevada, adding that he thought ``fat cats'' would have benefitted too much from the larger Baucus-Grassley bill.

Understand, Senator Baucus is a Democrat, I am a Republican. The portrait being painted, then, by certain members of the majority, echoed without critical examination by people in our press, is wildly inaccurate. For one thing, the tax extenders include provisions such as the deduction for qualified tuition for college and related expenses and also the deduction for certain expenses for elementary and secondary schoolteachers. That ended December 31. It is going to mean tax increases for these families if we don't reinstitute it. If you are going to college or if you are a grade school teacher, the Senate Democratic leadership thinks you are a fat cat, so you are on your own. If your house was destroyed in a recent natural disaster and you still need any of the temporary disaster relief provisions contained in this extenders package, too bad, because helping you would amount to corporate giveaways in the eyes of some around here.

The bipartisan package that was shelved included an extension of unemployment insurance and also a COBRA health insurance extension. Do these provisions benefit corporate fat cats? The answer is obviously no. Therefore, the common, ordinary person, Main Street America, smalltown America or big city America, the working people of this country, that is who will benefit from those provisions that are left out of this bill.

The tax extenders have also been routinely passed and repeatedly passed because, in fact, they are and have been bipartisan and have been very popular and have been very beneficial to the economy. Democrats have consistently voted in favor of extending these tax provisions. Let me as an example refer to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who released a very strong statement upon the House package of tax extenders in December 2009. Just 6 weeks ago, the other body passed these tax extenders. This is what the leader of the Democratic Party in the House had to say in December 2009, not very long ago: that it is ``good for business, good for homeowners, and good for our communities.''

In 2006, the then-Democratic leader released a blistering statement:

After Bush Republicans in the Senate blocked passage of critical tax extenders [because] American families and businesses are paying the price because this Do Nothing Republican Congress refuses to extend important tax breaks.

Recent bipartisan votes in the Senate on extending expiring tax provisions have come in the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, the Tax Relief and Health Care Act of 2006, which passed the Senate by unanimous vote, and the Working Families Tax Relief Act of 2004, which was originally passed in the Senate by a simple voice vote, although the conference report received 92 votes in favor and a whopping 3 against. That doesn't sound, to me, like these tax extenders are just for GOP corporate fat cats.

According to the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, extension of several of these provisions goes back even further, including the Tax Relief Extension Act of 1999, which passed the Senate by unanimous consent and lost just one Senator voting against it coming out of conference.

Why have Democrats in the last few weeks or maybe in just the last few days turned against the extenders, particularly considering it passed overwhelmingly in the House of Representatives with Democratic support? The only explanation to this behavior is that certain Senators have decided it serves deeply partisan goals to slander what have been, for several years, very bipartisan and very popular tax provisions benefiting many different people.

Yesterday's Washington Post article, from which I quoted, includes a statement from a Democratic leadership aide saying that:

No decisions have been made, but anyone expecting us immediately to go back to a bill that includes tax extenders will be sorely disappointed.

Having put their heads into the sand, this Chamber's leaders seem intent on keeping them there, based on that previous quote. The bill, as currently written, would allow employers of illegal workers to benefit from the payroll tax holiday. For sure, we should correct that mistake with an amendment. But under this parliamentary setup, you can only offer an amendment if not a single Senator objects to setting aside the existing business and replacing it with a new idea. The leadership's posture on this bill now prohibits this correction of giving illegal workers the benefit of a payroll tax holiday or the employer that employs them. Either the Democratic leaders are playing partisan politics with tax extenders or they don't understand the worth of the provisions to the economy as a whole and, most importantly, job retention and job creation.

I wish to speak about a very specific industry where 23,000 jobs are at risk and, in some instances, people actually without a job since December 31 because the biodiesel tax credit has been allowed to expire on December 31.

That is one of the many tax extenders.

These workers are not GOP corporate fat cats, and in case anybody thinks biodiesel--because it is connected to agriculture--is related just to Iowans, let me make it very clear that these green jobs are in 44 of the 50 States, with thousands of people unemployed.

There are 24 facilities in Texas, 15 in my State of Iowa, 6 in Illinois, 6 in Missouri, and 4 facilities in Washington State. Ohio has 11 facilities, there are 5 facilities in Indiana, 3 each in Mississippi and South Carolina, 7 in Pennsylvania, and 4 in Arkansas. New Jersey has 2 facilities, there is 1 facility in North Dakota. Only 6 States out of 50 do not have some biodiesel production layoffs because Congress did not act by December 31 of last year.

You know what. We just had to stay in session on Christmas Eve--because we had not met on Christmas Eve since 1895--to pass a health care reform bill that does not take effect until 2014.

Think of that. Let people in the biodiesel industry be laid off because Congress cannot act because we had to work on a bill that does not take effect until the year 2014.

So we need to turn away from talk about GOP corporate fat cats. We have to start thinking about those teachers having income tax provisions to be able to deduct expenses they have for their classrooms. We ought to think about these biodiesel workers being laid off. We ought to be thinking about the people who are harmed by the floods and have an extension of the temporary tax relief for them and quit bad-mouthing popular bipartisan proposals that we need to pass and should have passed yet last year, as the House of Representatives did. So we need to get back to work on a bipartisan package that was in the works until the Democratic leadership dramatically changed directions and went partisan.

I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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