Extension of Tax Extenders

Floor Speech

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Mr. McCONNELL. I am happy to respond to my friend, Majority Leader Reid.

These tax provisions certainly are important to millions of American families and businesses, and I would expect that Congress would act on these sooner rather than later. The uncertainty that follows when we allow these to expire and don't allow families, small businesses, and job creators generally to properly plan is unacceptable and damaging to our economy.

That said, there are a number of members of my conference who have serious questions about some of the provisions that were voted on today. For a number of years Congress has reflexively extended all of these measures without any meaningful review or oversight. I know that the Republican members of the Finance Committee would gladly join in a bipartisan effort to conduct a much needed critical review of these measures and recommend to the Senate which should be dropped, which need modification and which are worthy of support as currently constructed. The repeated expiration and renewal of these various targeted tax credits and the fact our corporate tax rate will soon be the highest among our major trading partners underscores the need for Congress to take on corporate tax reform at the earliest possible date.

So while I join the majority leader in welcoming the opportunity to work together to find a path forward, I would hope that both bodies of Congress would have the opportunity to look carefully at what is in this package and see if we can't come to an agreement on what is best for the country.

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