America's Small Business Tax Relief Act of 2015

Floor Speech

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Mr. CRAMER. Mr. Speaker, I thank the sponsor of this important legislation for yielding the time.

I just have to respond to the most recent speaker, who I believe is sincere in his concerns, but we are not talking today about corporations and loopholes. We are not talking about education and homelessness. Those are important things that we want to work with them on. We are talking today about small business.

I found it sort of disturbing that the ranking member said that today is not about small business; it is about monkeying around with procedures. Are we so wed to our procedures that that is more important than small businesses?

I also have to say that, for me, in my town halls, in my Coffee with Cramer sessions, my regular town halls--I had more town halls than any Member of Congress last year--the number one issue that is raised not by corporations but by small family business men and women, largely farmers and ranchers, is the issue of 179 expensing and the uncertainty that is created by mid-December extensions to the previous year. Maybe if they are lucky, the farmer gets to buy a new combine for Christmas.

But it is about more than even the farmer or the snow removal business person that needs to buy a new snow blower or the lawn care businessman that needs to buy a new mower. It is about more than the implement dealers. It is about more than even the Case IH plant or John Deere plant or the Melroe Bobcat plants in North Dakota. Those are important. But it is also about the mechanic that works at the implement dealership, who is one paycheck away from not being able to feed his family. It is about the restaurant owner, the cafe owner in a small town who feeds breakfast and lunch and dinner and, yes, occasionally mid-morning coffee over the shaking of dice to that farmer, to that implement dealer, to that mechanic that benefits from the dynamics--the dynamics--of an economy that, yes, provides this, not a loophole, this appropriate deduction in the year in which a piece of equipment is purchased. It makes all the difference in the world not to corporate America, but to middle class families, hardworking farmers and ranchers and mechanics and snow removers and landscapers and all kinds of middle class working people in America.

Let's do the right thing. Let's make this incremental step toward comprehensive tax reform and do the thing that I know we all know is the right thing to do. Let's pass this bill. Let's pass it in the Senate. Let's get it on the President's desk and appeal to him for common sense.

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