Fighting Hunger Incentive Act of 2015

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Ms. PELOSI. I thank the gentleman for yielding and for his leadership on helping to have a budget that produces growth to reduce the deficit.

Mr. Speaker, today, we are talking about issues on which we are very much in agreement in terms of the policy toward charitable giving. In fact, some of this legislation has been introduced by Mr. Levin and Mr. Thompson on the Ways and Means Committee, in fact, in offering an amendment in Rules last night, which was rejected by the Rules Committee, to go forward in a way that was fiscally sound and was paid for.

Here is the problem that we have. We all want to have comprehensive tax reform, where we can close loopholes and we can lower the tax rate and we can have transparency in our Tax Code. In order to go to the table to do that--and I know there is bipartisan interest in doing so--we should go to the table with as much freedom as possible and not constrained by taking rifle shots on the floor of the House for certain pieces of the Tax Code. The whole package that the Republicans are putting forth is about $800 billion. That is a lot of money.

It is important for people to know that, in our budget every year, we have a part of the budget that is called tax expenditures. They are well over $1 trillion. Some of them are worthy, and we want to protect them--certainly, charitable deductions fall in that category--but many of them are not. Many of those tax expenditures, which means giving a tax break whether it is special interest loopholes in the Tax Code to special interests, do not create growth. They increase the deficit, and they are just like spending. They are called expenditures because they are giving a tax break to certain special interests.

Okay. How does that fit in here?

We want to go to the table--put everything on the table--and subject it to agnostic scrutiny to say: What works for growth? What is fair about transparency? How do we proceed in a way that lowers the corporate rate? increases the revenue to the budget? that has fairness, simplicity, and transparency?

What the Republicans are proposing this week is totally in opposition to our being able to do that effectively. What they are saying is let us take $800 billion--permanently, unpaid for--out of the mix, and then we have less to negotiate on in terms of what we can do on the other side of the budget, which are investments into the future.

I have always said--and I think that most economists would agree--that nothing brings more money to the Treasury or reduces the deficit more than investments in education--early childhood education, K-12, higher ed, postgraduate--lifelong learning. That is about growth. That is about bigger paychecks, confidence to spend, demand injected into the economy, jobs created, revenue produced. It is all part of how we can go forward with a budget for the future that creates growth and reduces the deficit.

So we have this obstacle, which sounds very good. How do you vote against these provisions, which are good provisions, about nonprofits and conservation and all of these other things? We agree--as I say, our colleagues have introduced them--but then you say that they are permanently unpaid for. Again, mixing some of the good with the not so good is like a Trojan horse moving in. It looks good, but wait a minute. There is a lot in the gut of that horse that is not good for growth or for reducing the deficit.

All we are saying to everyone today is we can come to agreement on some of the principles about tax deductions for charitable organizations. It is curious to hear our colleagues talk so movingly about providing food for hungry people when very few of them want to vote for food stamps, but that is a whole other issue. It just shows some inconsistency in all of this.

Just remember this one thing: if we want to have comprehensive tax reform--if we want to reduce the deficit, if we want to have balance in terms of investments plus how we produce revenue--we have to do it in a comprehensive way. That is what a budget is about. What we are doing today is to throw up, to just stack the deck against any investments in growth, because we have already taken $800 billion off the table if we go down this path.

What we are doing today is to say other tax reforms that we want to make for fairness are already in jeopardy because of some of what is in this. As I say, some are positive and some are not. Let's be discerning in how we make the judgment. You can't be discerning by saying: I am going to vote for permanent, unpaid-for tax expenditures--which, as I say, have a blend of positive and negative in them, but it is hard to make a distinction without seeing the whole, big picture of it.

I urge my colleagues to say: While I support some of what is good in all of this, I do not support permanently taking it off the table for consideration and not paying for it at this time.

In order to talk this through and have a clear instead of this drive-by approach to tax policy--an antideficit exploding spree that our Republican colleagues are on while they profess to be deficit hawks--and while we are working this out and having a discussion about this, we, in our motion to recommit, will have a 1-year extension of the provision that we are talking about here so that, okay, in the course of this time, we will go forward with a tax extender for 1 year.

Hopefully, in that time, under the leadership of the Budget chair, who is also from the Ways and Means Committee--he understands these issues very well. In fact, his own budget would not be consistent with what he is putting on the floor today as he is the former chair of Ways and Means, now of the Budget Committee. No. It is the reverse, but it is related. They are so related because how we produce revenue is so essential to how we do our budget, and the gentleman knows that because his own budget would be inconsistent with what is on the floor today.

So I say to my colleagues: Hold on. Vote ``no'' on this. Vote ``yes'' on the motion to recommit, which gives us a year to talk this through but to do so in a way that reduces the deficit, produces growth, makes bigger paychecks from that growth to increase more revenue, and we would have these provisions go forth in a way that is fair, that is paid for, and that is part of comprehensive tax reform.

With that, again, I thank the gentleman for his exceptional leadership and the members of the Ways and Means Committee for their courage in opposing something that has popular appeal. There is a reason why. They are not bad policies. It is just that they are not paid for, and they are permanent. We should do this, but we should do it right. I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on the bill and ``yes'' on the motion to recommit.

I thank the gentleman for his leadership.

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