S Corporation Permanent Tax Relief Act of 2014
Floor Speech
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Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague, the ranking member of the Ways and Means Committee, for all his work on this.
The bills that we are seeing today on the floor of the House are part of a series of bills that have come out of the Ways and Means Committee from our Republican colleagues that run up our national debt by putting hundreds of billions of dollars on a credit card by permanently extending a number of business tax credits. In the process, they are actually violating their own budget that they had on the floor just a few months ago.
That is why, Mr. Speaker, this is not a serious attempt to help small businesses. By bringing these measures up one at a time in a rifle-shot fashion, our Republican colleagues are abandoning what they said we should do, which we agree we should do on a bipartisan basis, which is to tackle tax reform in a fiscally responsible way.
After all, Mr. Speaker, we are not helping small businesses by running up our national debt. It was just about a month ago when our Republican colleagues told us that the biggest threat to future economic growth in this country was projected deficits in the out years. We have said to our Republican colleagues we need to work together to reduce that long-term deficit. It is not a question about whether we should do it, it is a question of how we should do it.
But this bill, and these bills on the floor today, take us in the opposite direction. Together, they are going to add over $614 billion to our credit card if you add up all these rifle-shot bills that have come out of the Ways and Means Committee.
Mr. Speaker, what happened to all the rhetoric about fiscal discipline, about getting our deficits in order? Out the window.
Just to put these numbers in perspective, that $640 billion on the credit card is 30 times what it would cost to extend emergency unemployment compensation to 3 million Americans who are out of work today through no fault of their own.
So contrasting these bills with the budget rhetoric we heard a few months ago about reducing our deficits is total doublespeak. Our Republican colleagues know it doesn't meet the laugh test.
When we had the debate on this very floor about the Republican budget, we pointed out that the claim that it balanced in 10 years was based on all sorts of Enron-like accounting gimmicks. For example, they assumed all the revenues that would come in over the next 10 years from the Affordable Care Act at the same time they said they were repealing the Affordable Care Act. Both things can't happen at the same time.
Yet today, even if you take the Republican budget gimmicks, as they would have us do, even if you do that, their budget no longer balances in 10 years, it no longer balances in 10 years. In fact, if you look carefully at the rules governing this debate, our Republican colleagues had to change their own rules to allow this bill to be on the floor today because otherwise it would have violated their claim of a balanced budget. So, that is the kind of gimmickry we have going on here.
If our Republican colleagues were really serious about reducing the long-term deficit, as they claimed to be a month ago, they would be willing to close some of those special interest tax breaks in order to help reduce the deficit, and yet their budget doesn't close a single special interest tax break. It keeps the big subsidies for Big Oil companies, it keeps tax breaks for hedge fund owners. The bills before us today are under a rule that doesn't allow us to pay for them by closing some of those tax breaks. Mr. Levin and I would have loved to have the opportunity to say: let's pay for this business expensing provision by shutting down some of the unproductive tax breaks, tax breaks that are there not because they have economic value but because a powerful political interest got that tax break in the Code. Yet our Republican colleagues have a rule that says we can't touch those.
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Mr. VAN HOLLEN. I thank my friend.
I really think this goes to the heart of the matter, because whether it was the R&D tax credit, the research and development tax credit, or the business expensing provision, I support those provisions, but I support doing them in a fiscally responsible way that doesn't add over $600 billion to our deficit and debt.
How can we do that in a fiscally responsible way? But shutting down some of the unproductive special interest tax breaks in the Tax Code. Yet, the rule before us says we are not allowed to do that. We can't even have a vote, Mr. Speaker, on shutting down some of those special interest tax breaks. That is how far our Republican colleagues are willing to go to keep those special interest tax breaks, not even allowing a vote to close one of them to pay for an R&D tax credit.
So what is this really all about? By running up our national credit card with these business tax provisions you add to the deficit. Then our Republican colleagues will be back here with their budget saying: do you know what, now that we have this big deficit you've got to cut funding for our kids' education, which is what they did in their budget; you have got to voucherize Medicare, which is what they did in their budget; we are not going to have enough funds for our national infrastructure and our highway program, which under their budget goes dry in September, people out of work.
So by providing permanent, unpaid for tax extenders in the business area and running up that deficit, they will come right back to us and say: Do you know what? Now we care again about the deficit, and here is what we want to do about it: cut early education, cut our investment infrastructure, cut the National Institutes of Health research into finding cures and treatments for diseases.
That is why, Mr. Speaker, this is not a serious effort. The chairman of the Ways and Means Committee made an honest effort at tax reform. I don't agree with a lot of what is in his tax reform bill, but it was an honest, professional effort. That is not coming to the floor today. In fact, this bill before us runs directly counter to the chairman's own tax reform effort, just as it violates the Republicans' own budget.
So, let's get serious, Mr. Speaker. Let's deal with these in a manner that provides the incentives we want to businesses. We can do that by extending these on a short-term basis while we work together to come up with a reasonable tax reform plan in a way that is responsible from a budget perspective. That is the way we should be doing the people's business here in the House. Because we are not doing it that way, I urge our colleagues to vote ``no'' on the provisions that are before us.
I thank my colleague, the ranking member of the Ways and Means Committee.
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Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague, Mr. Levin.
As the gentleman from Washington knows, these issues come up every year as to whether or not we should extend certain tax provisions, in this case the business tax provision, earlier the R&D tax provision. Those are provisions that we support, but we support doing them in a fiscally responsible way.
In fact, the motion to recommit we will have will also say we should extend them for one more year while we get our act together here, Mr. Speaker, and do it in a way that doesn't run up the credit card by $600 billion, which is what the Ways and Means Committee has done in a period of 2 weeks--2 weeks--after spending days on the floor of this house a few months ago saying that the biggest threat to economic growth in the future was our budget deficit.
They say that 2 months ago, and then they waive their own rules to bring up these bills that increase our credit card debt to the tune of $600 billion total from what came out of the Ways and Means Committee, in violation of your own budget.
That is what I object to.
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