General Leave

Floor Speech

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Mr. NEAL. Mr. Speaker, my friend Mr. Brady spoke eloquently, as always, about the notion of fundamental tax reform. I mean, a reasonable mind in this Chamber might ask: When? The chairman is not even here this morning. He sends out as the starting pitcher his ace reliever, Mr. Brady, to defend what we all know in the end is going to be a 1-year extension of this tax provision.

Friends, this is a messaging amendment. By the way, after they get done today with repealing the estate tax, perhaps we could move in this Chamber to call this now the ``House of Lords,'' where it might be peerage and peer review that brings us here.

Mr. Speaker, it is April. The birds are chirping; the flowers are blooming; the days are getting longer; and the nights are getting warmer. Spring has sprung. The onset of spring brings with it a new baseball season--that time of year when hope springs eternal and every fan thinks his team has a fair shot of claiming baseball glory and immortality.

However, for the fans of bipartisan tax reform, the Republicans are saying here in April: wait until next year.

Yesterday was the 100th day of the 114th Congress. It is 100 days up, 100 days down, and we are no closer to making tax reform a reality. Our Republican friends have wasted 4 months of valuable time and have nothing to show for it. They have whiffed on the 10 permanent tax extender bills that they have passed this year. Not one of these bills has become law nor will any become law. The President has made that clear, and he has issued a veto threat on every one of these bills.

Contrast this with the Senate Finance Committee. Rather than pursuing a minor league strategy of passing one partisan, unpaid-for, permanent tax extender bill after another on party-line votes, adding to the deficits, they are working together to move forward on bipartisan tax reform.

Democrats have no quarrel with the bill that is before us today but for one exception: State and local sales tax deduction promotes tax fairness for the States that do not impose a State income tax. It only makes sense that, if taxpayers in income tax States can deduct their State and local taxes, so should the residents of sales tax States. We support making State and local sales tax deductions eventually permanent but not at the cost of $42 billion a year being added to the deficit. This is how they have done all of these tax extenders--the party, by the way, that frequently will have us believe that they are champions of fiscal responsibility.

Mr. Speaker, we are prepared to step up to the plate as Democrats and pass a bipartisan tax reform bill that really hits it out of the park for middle class people, that creates jobs, that gives special interests a little chin music--or, as we call it, the ``brushback''--and that ushers in lasting economic growth, much the same as we experienced during the Clinton years here in America: surpluses for years, growth unprecedented. There were 23 million new jobs created during those years. That is the experience that we should be talking about today.

The chairman of our committee, my friend, Mr. Ryan, is always saying that this committee can walk and chew gum at the same time. Guess what? I believe him.

So, Mr. Chairman, do we prefer Wrigley's, Hubba Bubba, or, maybe, the classic Big League Chew?

Let's get on to the third inning and get tax reform done, and let's stop procrastinating in front of the American people.

I yield back the balance of my time.

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