Fighting Hunger Incentive Act of 2015

Floor Speech

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Mr. DANNY K. DAVIS of Illinois. Mr. Chairman, I have long supported
the tax incentive for businesses to deduct charitable contributions of
food inventory. Indeed, I have a bill to expand the deduction for non-C
corps, as does the bill under consideration.

The food inventory deduction allows us to help stock America's food
banks and feed the hungry. Importantly, we need to address the food
inventory deduction because, unlike other business tax extenders, the
food deduction provision cannot be useful if extended retroactively. If
it expires, our hunger relief organizations miss out on potential
donations of food.

In Chicago, where I live, one in six people, including children, do
not know where their next meal is coming from.

In addition to advancing charitable and S corps tax provisions, this
committee should be prioritizing the permanent extension of the earned
income tax credit to help the working poor afford food and other basic
needs for their families.

We should be prioritizing the new market tax credits to help
distressed communities so that the hungry can have jobs so that they
can purchase their own food and not rely on food banks.

Although I strongly support incentivizing charitable donations of
food inventory, I do not support passing unpaid for, permanent, and
piecemeal tax breaks while the needs of other vulnerable citizens go
unmet.

We should be considering the EITC, AOTC, new market tax credit, work
opportunity tax credit, tuition and fees deduction, teacher tax
benefits, Promise Zones, and hundreds of other tax provisions that help
our communities and our people.

One of the things that I have learned--if I know nothing else--is
something that Frederick Douglass was known for saying, that in this
world, you may not get everything that you pay for, but you most
certainly will pay for everything that you get, and if you don't pay
one way, then you will definitely pay another way.

The price of increasing the deficit, not providing a broad,
comprehensive tax reform effort, is something that we ought not be
paying for. The principles and concepts in many of the provisions,
obviously, we agree, but we do not agree that you can go on paying for
what it is that you need.

Mr. Speaker, I will vote ``no'' on these provisions.

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