Small Business Paperwork Mandate Elimination Act of 2011
Floor Speech
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Mr. DOGGETT. I thank the gentleman.
I voted previously to repeal these 1099 reporting requirements. But for broad Republican opposition, these requirements would have been repealed a long time ago.
I was a little amused to hear one of our Republican colleagues actually say this morning that he is bewildered as to why there are all these requirements on small businesses around the country as a result of this provision. I can cure your bewilderment: Get a mirror out and look at the mirror. You will see the Republicans who voted against repealing this provision last year.
No, this is not about repealing 1099. It is about shifting the burden onto working families while at the same time protecting insurance monopolies.
Despite the vigorous, determined efforts of these Republicans to undermine every aspect of health insurance reform, under current law, working families will receive an opportunity to access health insurance. Each year, the government will match some of what workers pay for their health insurance. The precise amount of the match is determined by how low a worker's salary is. A minimum-wage worker would get a little more assistance than someone who is at a little higher level. This bill ensures that the health insurance companies will get to keep all of that Federal match, but it treats the working families considerably differently.
If you have an employee who really shows ability and who may have a fairly menial or mundane job but who does it and does it with pride and does it well and if that employee excels and if the employer rewards him with a bonus and recognizes that that employee is really trying hard and then decides we're going to give you a little promotion and that you'll get a little more pay or, perhaps, as with so many families around this country, that employee decides ``I'll never make it for my family on this. I'm going to moonlight. I'm going to take an extra job,'' then under any of these developments for the enterprising worker, the Republicans today propose a penalty, a tax on success.
At the end of that year, after those law-abiding employees have properly estimated their income from those 12 months earlier, if their pay has gone up a dollar over the level, they'll get a steep penalty. They may have to pay literally thousands of dollars back even though they only got a bonus of a few hundred dollars. They would owe the value, perhaps, of the entire credit to the IRS.
What type of people are we talking about?
If the law had been fully effective, as I wish it had been this year, and if workers who were earning $43,560 got a bonus that took them up to $43,600, they would have owed the full amount of the credit at the end of the year. $1,000 or perhaps $3,000 or $4,000 to a family as a penalty--as a tax on success--is a big amount to that family.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The time of the gentleman has expired.
Mr. LEVIN. I yield the gentleman an additional 2 minutes.
Mr. DOGGETT. Understand the dimensions of how big the burden is that they want to shift to working families: According to their own report on this bill, the total is almost $25 billion over the next decade. We're not talking about a small amount of money. We're talking about a significant amount of money in this Republican penalty on success.
Why haven't they been out here responding to this penalty on success? They want to refer to these people as ``cheats.''
These people aren't cheats. They're people who are the best of America, who are striving and working to get ahead, who then get penalized for their success.
They have no answer because there is no answer. We should have passed this bill last year and passed it by paying for it by closing international corporate tax loopholes. Naturally they resist that just as they resist any attempt to control insurance monopolies.
Vote ``no'' on this penalty for success that would be imposed on our working families. Vote against this piece of legislation.
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