Fighting Hunger Incentive Act of 2015

Floor Speech

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Mr. VAN HOLLEN. I thank my friend from Michigan.

Mr. Speaker, things are not always what they seem, and this is one of those cases. It is unfortunate because tax incentives for charitable giving are the kind of issues we should be handling in a bipartisan way. We should be working together in a bipartisan manner to reform our Tax Code and this as part of that.

Unfortunately, we are not doing that today, and this bill along with the series of other bills that will be coming to the floor in the days to come will add $350 billion to our deficit over the next 10 years.

Mr. Speaker, most of the bills that are coming next are permanent extensions of tax breaks to major corporations. In the process, they don't pay for any of that. They don't close a single corporate tax loophole to provide those tax breaks.

Now, Mr. Speaker, I am holding in my hand the budget that Republicans passed in this House just a year ago. Now we have the chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means--he was chairman of the Committee on the Budget, a good friend of mine. In their budget last year, they said they would not do what they are doing today. They passed a budget saying they would not have tax extenders that added to the deficit. I am reading right here from the budget that I think passed unanimously with Republican votes. It says they will only do these tax extenders if such measures would not increase the deficit for the period of fiscal years 2015 to 2024.

Here we are, less than a year later, throw their budget out the door. Why did it matter? Because last year they wanted to pretend their budget was in balance after 10 years, and they knew that if you had these tax extenders that were unpaid for, they wouldn't have a balanced budget. It wasn't balanced anyway, but no matter, that is why they did it.

Now, why does this matter beyond the fact that the Republican majority did one thing last year and is doing something different today? It matters because when you increase the deficits, our Republican colleagues are going to come right back around to us and say: You know what? The deficits are going to go up, and so we have to cut some of the investments that are supposed to help vulnerable people--the very people our Republican colleagues say they want to help today. They are going to say: Deficits are going up. We have got to cut those programs.

You know how we know that? Even before they increase the deficit like they are doing today, they were cutting those investments last year. In fact, while they are claiming to fight hunger today, here is what the budget from last year did: it would have cut the food and nutrition programs by 20 percent, $137 billion. That would have ended nutrition assistance for 3.8 million Americans.

Now, I heard one of my friends and colleagues, Mr. Roskam from Illinois, saying Democrats are opposing this.

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Mr. VAN HOLLEN. I heard some of our colleagues saying we are opposing this on the basis of process. Really? Cutting nutrition assistance programs for 3.8 million Americans is process?

You know what else their budget did? It cut the category of spending that we use for the Women, Infants, and Children program to the point that 200,000 women, infants, and children would have been cut off of supplemental nutrition assistance under the Women, Infants, and Children program. Process? Really? I thought our colleagues were saying they wanted to fight hunger.

That budget last year, the one I am holding in my hands that passed here, you know what else it did? It did not extend tax credits for vulnerable people. It did not extend the earned income tax credit bump up. It did not extend the child tax credit. At the same time, they had a budget, and I suspect they will again this year, that cuts the top income tax rate for millionaires. That is what they do.

We can do a lot better, Mr. Speaker. That is what Democrats are saying. We can make these reforms to the Tax Code. We can make the charitable deduction permanent, but we can do it in a way that doesn't hurt other programs for hungry people. We can help hungry people through one mechanism without hurting those same people through another mechanism. That is why the President said he was going to veto this bill, not because it helps the deduction for charitable giving. This is a bill that says we are going to help some hungry people. But you know what? We are going to do something else in our budget that actually hurts those same hungry people even more, much more.

Now, I am also holding in my hand the Democratic budget that was presented last year. You know what we do? We permanently extended this charitable deduction--permanently--just like this bill. But you know what we did not do?

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Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend.

So I just want to be clear. In our budget, we extended permanently this charitable deduction to fight hunger, the fighting hunger incentive. We did that.

But you know what we did not do? We did not cut the food and nutrition program, SNAP, by 20 percent. You know what we did not do? We did not cut the part of the budget that funds the Women, Infants, and Children program so that 200,000 people would not have the benefit of that.

You know what we did do? We cut a lot of the corporate tax breaks. We said we should not have a Tax Code that actually rewards American companies that move American jobs and capital overseas, so we would cut down on those. In that way, we were able to pay for them. That way, Mr. Speaker, we were able to extend the charitable deduction permanently, but we were also able to avoid cutting the Women, Infants, and Children program and avoid cutting the food and nutrition programs. That is what we are saying.

Unfortunately, the bill before us today, what they are saying is, by increasing the deficit, yes, we are going to extend this program to fight hunger; but, on the other hand, when their budget comes around next year, they are actually going to pass stuff that hurts those same people even more.

What we are saying is we don't have to help people by hurting people. We can do it all if we are willing to cut some of those corporate tax breaks, tax expenditures, spinning the Tax Code for major corporations that are put there because they have good lobbyists in Washington.

So let's do this the right way. That's the way we did it in the Democratic budget last year. That is the way we will do it in the Democratic budget again this year. Let's not help people by hurting other people or even hurting the people we are trying to help.

Mr. Speaker, I regretfully urge that we reject this

bill and do this the right way.

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