Small Business Lending Fund Act of 2010

Floor Speech

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Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, we have a tax bill before us that is supposed to help small business because small business creates 70 percent of the new jobs. The President says that. I think we have to look at the background of the high unemployment rate, particularly why it is staying up there--maybe not why it got up there but why is it still there.

I spoke last night about a lot of uncertainty that comes because of the cap-and-trade bill, the bank regulatory reform bill, the health care reform bill, the biggest tax increase in the history of the country coming up this fall if we do not intervene and prevent the biggest tax increase, and a lot of other issues out there that tell us how uncertain it is, what Congress is going to do. That uncertainty keeps the entrepreneurs of America from opening up and creating jobs.

If you want to quantify how they are tight-fisted about the situation right now, the last figure I saw was about $2.1 trillion in cash in the treasuries of major corporations of America. They are not making any money by storing that cash, but they do not know what sort of a future this Congress is going to give them, so they are very guarded on any moves they make. Then we have things such as shutting down all the oil drilling--unemploying tens of thousands of people. Then what I am going to visit with you about is the fact we did not pass the biodiesel tax credit December 31 last year when it sunset and that industry is shut down and 20,000 jobs have been lost. It is ironic to me that we spent weeks on a bill that is before the Senate, as legitimate as it is, to create jobs in small business, when, frankly, there are a lot of negative things going on

in the Congress of the United States that cause people to be laid off or, because of uncertainty, not to be hired back. I wish to speak about the biodiesel industry.

As we are faced today with a 9.6-percent unemployment rate, I have a solution that will create 20,000 jobs almost overnight. That solution is to extend the biodiesel tax credit today. This tax credit expired December 31, 2009. This democratically controlled Congress has failed to extend it, even though, on several occasions, I and other Members on this side of the aisle have taken action in that direction.

The Democratic leadership claims, as the President does, that they want more green jobs--and I am in favor of that. I am the author of the Wind Energy Tax Credit, as an example. I have been a backer of ethanol. I have been a backer of biomass and this biodiesel tax credit. So there are plenty of opportunities to show that we, on this side of the aisle, support the President wanting to create green jobs. If the President and the Democratic leadership want to do that, they have not acted to prevent the loss of green jobs in the biodiesel industry.

The biodiesel industry has lost tens of thousands of jobs as a result of this neglect. It would be nice if the Democratic leadership's rhetoric met with reality.

I have twice sought to have the biodiesel tax credit simply passed through the Senate by unanimous consent. However, both times my request was objected to by those on the other side of the aisle. Meanwhile, these biodiesel plants in Iowa and throughout the country continue to lay off workers. In fact, most of them are just plain shut down because the democratically controlled Congress has not extended the biodiesel tax credit.

I made a speech similar to this in December, when we were on the health care reform bill. I said: Can't we find some time to pass these tax extenders so we do not let them lapse--and all these question marks. That was 8 months ago, 9 months ago. But somehow we thought last December, since Congress had not been in session on Christmas Eve since 1895, we ought to be in session once in 115 years--or because we just had to pass this health care reform bill before the end of the year because it takes effect by 2014, we couldn't find a little bit of time to keep 22,000 people employed in the biodiesel industry. So we asked for those consents and we did not get them. These workers are laid off because the democratically controlled Congress has not extended this tax credit.

This is a simple and noncontroversial tax extension that will likely reinstate 20,000 more jobs nationwide and at least 2,000 within my State of Iowa. By the way, this is not controversial, and there are 71 other tax provisions that expired December 31, 2009, and I don't know that any of those are controversial. So the biodiesel industry has lost its jobs. These jobs have fallen victim to a tactic used by the Democratic leadership to hold this popular and noncontroversial tax provision hostage in an attempt to advance political objectives.

Just last February I worked out a bipartisan compromise on tax extenders--all of them--with Chairman Baucus to extend the expired tax provisions, including biodiesel.

However, the Senate Democratic leadership decided to put partisanship ahead of the job security for tens of thousands of biodiesel workers by destroying the compromise to which Chairman Baucus and I agreed. So I am here again to try to put tens of thousands of people back to work producing clean and renewable fuel that everybody in this Congress says they support, and the green jobs from these productions.

There is a difference between a biodiesel tax credit and the other tax provisions in the tax extender bill that has stalled in the Senate. The failure to extend the biodiesel tax credit before it expired has ground the industry to a halt because biodiesel is now more expensive than gasoline. Gasoline stations, knowing they cannot sell biodiesel, do not buy it, and biodiesel producers have, therefore, stopped producing biodiesel because they have nobody to sell it to. Consequently, the layoffs.

While the other tax provisions are important, most are not as time sensitive as biodiesel because they are not transactional tax incentives like the biodiesel tax credit but, instead, are based on a taxable year. Unfortunately, now it is clear the larger extenders bill has stalled for the time being. We need to pass the biodiesel tax credit separately.

The last time I sought unanimous consent, which was the second time I did it, one of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle objected. The objection said something like, the biodiesel tax credit was part of a larger extenders bill they were working on.

Now that the tax extenders bill is stalled, the Senate needs to pass the biodiesel tax credit by itself. I ask my colleagues to vote yes to waive the rules and put 20,000 biodiesel workers back to work.

I move to suspend rule XXII, paragraph 2, for the purposes of proposing and considering amendment No. 4433, which is at the desk. Having said my part, I think before Senator Hatch speaks--he will speak about a very popular tax extender that needs to be extended and on which I do not know that there is one single disagreement. It is a noncontroversial provision but has still been languishing here for the last 9 months, and losing jobs as a result of it, at the very same time we are trying to create jobs through a bill that is before the Senate.

I yield the floor.

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Mr. GRASSLEY. Madam President, I have 1 minute to speak to my motion to suspend the rules to bring up this bill.

We are on a bill now on the Senate floor that is supposed to create jobs. Hopefully, this bill will create jobs. But it is kind of small compared to what this Congress could do by passing the biodiesel tax credit. It should have been passed before December 31 last year. Senator Baucus and I put together a bipartisan bill to do it in February. That bill was delayed by the majority leader, so we are back here again for a third time, trying to get attention to jobs. This biodiesel tax credit will immediately put 20,000 more people back to work, and 2,000 in my State of Iowa.

I hope we will suspend the rules and create jobs for sure because those jobs were there before December 31 and they will be there on September 17 if we pass this amendment.

Madam President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

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