Providing for Consideration of H.R. 622, State and Local Sales Tax Deduction Fairness Act of 2015; Providing for Consideration of H.r. 1105, Death Tax Repeal Act of 2015; and Providing for Consideration of H.R. 1195, Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection Advisory Boards Act
Floor Speech
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Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
The rule here today provides for consideration of three bills, all of which I oppose in their current form. I want to talk about each of those.
We also have, under this rule, a closed process. This resolution contains the 19th and 20th closed rules of this Congress.
Instead of having an open debate about taxes here on tax day, we see nothing more than recycled partisan measures and attacks on consumer protections that are disguised and under the guise of a small business advisory board, which had historically been a bipartisan effort.
While discussing tax legislation on tax day may not seem the most exciting piece of legislative news to our constituents, I hope they are watching today, Mr. Speaker. This rule and this bill we are bringing under it really demonstrate the gulf that exists between our two parties when we talk about things like middle class economics.
This is a $296 billion tax cut. So if we have $296 billion in taxes cut, who are we going to cut taxes for?
This bill affects 100 families in Colorado. With the same amount of money, $296 billion, we could cut taxes for every American adult by $1,000.
That $1,000 would mean a lot to middle class families, Mr. Speaker. It might help pay for your kids' college tuition. It might help pay for a family vacation.
But instead of directing money there, we are directing it to the very wealthiest Americans, namely, those who die with more than a $10 million estate for a married couple. I think we see a stark contrast on priorities.
While I disagree with the policies and tactics that are under consideration, I think it is important to talk about what a Democratic majority would do here on tax day. We would certainly not be about to consider a bill that applies to literally zero percent of taxpayers, Mr. Speaker.
Let me clarify, because that may seem strange to some people that this applies to zero percent of taxpayers.
But the bill we are considering with regard to the inheritance tax on estates over $10 million would apply to 0.15 percent of taxpayers. That can be rounded down to zero.
It doesn't even apply to those taxpayers. It applies to them after they are dead. So it applies to zero living Americans.
Mind you, we won't have a debate about the broken immigration policies that impact over 11 million immigrant workers who would grow the tax base.
We won't have discussions on reducing taxes for the middle class, but we are having policies that affect a few thousand dead people, a few thousand rich dead people, I might add.
If there were a Democratic majority on tax day, we would be working to provide tax relief to middle class families, rather than offering a bill that would gut one agency whose sole purpose is to protect middle class consumers and delivering a tax break to rich, dead families.
We have another bill under this rule, ostensibly about a small business advisory board. This is a worthwhile effort to provide a small business advisory input to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Unfortunately, it is a minimal cost, $9 million, but the Republicans are offering a way of paying for it that guts the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. They are effectively cutting off your arm to remove a splinter in your pinky.
Well, look. If the majority was consistent when they say the deficit matters and we must pay for legislation--but we are dealt with two bills that are mutually exclusive.
On the one hand, they are handing out $269 billion in deficit spending through providing tax cuts to 1,000 Americans who are already dead. And on the other hand, they are saying this $9 million dollars, somehow we have to figure out a way of paying for, and they are effectively gutting the financial protection agency to do it.
That is because this $9 million is apparently a step too far, even though they are offering two bills, one that adds $269 billion to the deficit, and the other adds $42 billion to the deficit, which I will talk about in a minute.
In this year alone, the House Ways and Means Committee has given Congress nine tax expenditure bills, at a cost of $317 billion, all unfunded; $317 billion in tax expenditure spending, not even including this $269 billion that they are looking at doing today.
And what bothers me most about this rule today is where we say to ourselves: Look, we will spend $269 billion for a tax expenditure for dead rich people, $42 billion on a tax reform that will ultimately make tax reform harder, but we can't spend $9 million on a bill to help small business.
I am sure that we all have a lot of ideas on both sides of the aisle about how we can spend money. If we have $269 billion in tax expenditures to use, why don't we direct that to a tax cut for small businesses or to reducing the corporate tax rate, which is one of the highest in the world, or reducing the middle class tax rate? But instead, it is being directed entirely to approximately 100 dead people in Colorado, rather than allowing businesses to keep more of their money so they can reinvest in their infrastructure and create jobs, this precious tax break we are giving to 100 dead people in the State of Colorado.
We should be talking about tax reform today. We should be talking about how to reduce taxes for the middle class. Instead, we are having a closed debate about another set of bills that will likely not pass the Senate, and if they got to the President's desk, he would veto.
I urge my colleagues to reject this rule. The repeal of the estate tax is very hard to explain to our constituents. That is because it is $269 billion that benefits almost no one--less than 100 people in the State of Colorado.
Now, when my friends call this the ``death tax'' or somehow say this will help small business, let's keep in mind, you don't even pay inheritance tax on the first $5 million of your estate, $10 million for a married couple. So you can die with a $5 million small business, a $10 million small business for a couple, and your heirs pay zero tax on that--zero tax.
What we are saying now is that the very limited number of families that might have estates of $50 million or $60 million, instead of paying tax on that, should pay zero tax on that and just have the costs of that added to the deficit.
There are a lot of ideas about spending $269 billion. We could say, oh, we could spend it on schools or science and research. Or even, if we limit ourselves to what we want to do with taxes, why aren't we lowering taxes on business? Why aren't we talking about reducing the marginal rate? Why aren't we talking about reducing all the tax brackets across the board? Why aren't we talking about a tax refund to middle class families? Instead, we are spending $269 billion on a few hundred dead rich people. From a tax policy standpoint, that has got to be one of the least productive ways to attempt to cut taxes.
You want to cut taxes on small businesses? No argument here. Give it to them while they are living.
I was a small-businessman before I got here. I would have loved to have been able to keep more of my own money to be able to invest in the growth of my small business rather than receive a tax break when I am already dead. This makes no sense in the world.
Look, we would all love to get rid of every tax, wouldn't we--estate tax, business tax, income tax--but we all agree that government needs so much money to function.
We have a House budget. The House budget that this body agreed to stipulates a certain amount of tax breaks. It is up to our body to decide how to deliver those tax breaks.
I honestly think that almost every businessowner would rather see lower rates while they are alive so they could grow their companies faster, creating growth and employing people, rather than a tax break after they are dead.
Proponents of this bill tell stories about how many businesses or farms are harmed every year by the estate tax. Well, how many of those same farms and businesses are harmed by the hard-earned money that they are forced to turn over to the government every year? Why aren't we saying: Give less of your hard-earned income to the government every year?
But no, the Republican tax-and-spend approach continues to oppress small businesses with higher and higher taxes, oppress the middle class with higher and higher taxes, while they are only concerned with delivering a tax break to dead rich people. I simply disagree that this is an efficient way to use our Tax Code to spur economic growth.
Chairman Ryan knows full well that I am enthusiastic about having a discussion about our Tax Code: how to cut taxes for business, reduce the burden on small businesses, simplify and streamline the Tax Code by reducing tax expenditures, and bringing down tax rates to ensure that the capital expenditures by businesses and reinvesting in businesses are determined by businessowners rather than by lobbyists here in Washington.
These bills are a step in the wrong direction, away from tax reform, and are detrimental to the American middle class and to American small businesses.
I reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. Speaker, before further yielding, I yield myself such time as I may consume to address some of the points of my colleague, the gentleman from Ohio.
He asked, Whose money is it? I think if you ask any small-bus i ness per son, any person whom we are talking about here--people that are worth over $10 million--and you say, ``Look, would you rather pay higher taxes while you are alive or after you are dead?'' I would bet almost everybody would rather hold on to more of their money. Whose money is it? Let them keep more of their own while they are alive and pay it after they are dead. I certainly would. I would much rather pay the government after I am dead than while I am alive, if we have to pay them at all.
Number two, he said, Why can't we come up with this pay-for? Well, look, this body, at its very best, just came together around a package over $100 billion for SGR.
This is $9 million. It is not that hard to pay for $9 million for the U.S. Government. We probably spent $9 million of U.S. Government time just having this debate right here, keeping the lights on and C-SPAN flowing and the Chamber going. For goodness' sake, $9 million--it is easy.
If you allowed this to come up under an open rule, Mr. Speaker, plenty of Members could have offered $9 million pay-fors. Take it out of almost any account; it is such a relatively small amount of money. You could take it from almost any government agency you want, and I am sure you can find $9 million to agree on to fund this rather than a backdoor attempt to gut the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Finally, the gentleman from Ohio said nothing in here precludes tax reform. Of course he is right; nothing precludes tax reform. We are just moving further and further away from tax reform by making permanent special interest tax cuts that we all agree are part of the discussion for tax reform to eliminate in order to bring down taxes. So it is moving further and further away. It doesn't preclude it. It makes it harder.
Mr. Speaker, yesterday was Equal Pay Day. If we defeat the previous question, we will offer an amendment to the rule that would allow the House to consider H.R. 1619, the Paycheck Fairness Act, introduced by Representative DeLauro, which I am proud to cosponsor.
I yield 3 1/2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Connecticut (Ms. DeLauro) to discuss our proposal.
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As we talked about yesterday in the committee, it seems like the answer that would move us toward tax reform would mean making the deduction of income tax temporary rather than make them both permanent, moving us away from reform.
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Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.
I have a hard time understanding why the Republicans, of all the parties, support H.R. 622, which incentivizes States and Governors to increase their taxes. This is a State and local tax extender. It is a step away from tax reform. It adds billions to our deficit.
Do my Republican colleagues realize that this bill and its sister policy deducting State and local income tax simply subsidizes high-tax States? That is what this does.
You are saying to Governors, Raise taxes as much as you want, Ohio Governor. Raise taxes as much as you want, Colorado Governor. Don't worry, the Federal Government will bail you out. We are going to have a Federal bailout for your own high taxes.
That is what this bill does, and you cannot dispute that. They are saying, Oh, it treats it the same. Oh, well, let's give this same bailout to Texas that we give to Ohio. Okay, let's bail out Texas for their high taxes and Ohio for their high taxes--brilliant, brilliant.
It seems like it is at odds with everything the Republican Party pretends to stand for while, here in this body, they are actually advocating to bail out States with high taxes.
For me, in some ways, that is actually the most troubling bill we are considering under this rule not because it is the worst policy of the three--that great distinction is owned by directing an enormous tax break to dead people rather than living people--but because the underlying policy of deducting State and local taxes can be defensible.
This signals that the majority has no interest in comprehensive tax reform. It moves us further away from tax reform by enshrining one of the tax loopholes that incentivizes States to raise taxes permanently in the Tax Code rather than including it as part of a package that brings down tax rates for American businesses and American individuals.
Here on tax day, why aren't we debating tax reform and reducing our tax rates? I am sure to say that there has been someone here on the House floor saying those exact words since 1986, the last time this body took on tax reform, but instead, the House Ways and Means Committee has given us these ``extender'' bills that all the ones passed this year have moved us $317 billion away from tax reform, away from cutting rates for American families and businesses.
Each billion that is put in the Tax Code represents an additional billion-dollar hurdle to ever getting a bipartisan tax reform deal done.
Now, look, I understand tax reform will be hard. No one agrees on what the final product should look like, even though the President and Chairman Ryan and others have indicated their support for the concept, but it should be and needs to be the goal of this Congress.
We can simplify the Tax Code and bring down tax rates. We can streamline the code. We can make sure that businesses invest wherever their productivity is most enhanced rather than optimize their expenditures to fit the Tax Code that lobbyists have inserted here in Washington, D.C. We can champion small businesses and middle class taxpayers rather than dead rich people and States with high sales taxes.
These discussions about tax extender policy move the baseline further and further away and make tax reform harder and harder to ever get done. Again, it is not adding any certainty to taxpayers.
If you listen to the majority, the folks who understand how these numbers add up at the end of the day, they know they can't take tax extenders that cost tens of billions of dollars completely ``off the table.'' You can't shield that money and still lower rates in the way that they are promising. The numbers just don't work.
If extenders like this are ``still on the table,'' why are we even calling this permanent? We are just further confusing people and injecting uncertainty. Republicans are telling Governors: go ahead and raise your sales taxes; we will bail you out.
At the same time, they are saying it is not off the table that some day we might cut that for tax reform, but they are moving further and further away from tax reform.
This bailout of high-tax States is simply a step away from tax reform and a step towards encouraging Governors to raise their sales tax by letting them know that the Federal Government is here to bail them out.
We will debate this bill today, not pay for it, make it harder to get to tax reform, send a message to Republican States like Texas that it is okay to raise your sales tax, but my hope is, hopefully, this is our last one.
Maybe we can begin a serious discussion that Chairman Camp started with his outline on tax reform that Chairman Ryan has paid lip service to, and I hope that we will work on a bipartisan proposal that we can begin without haste.
Finally, I want to address the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection Advisory Boards Act. Again, Republicans took a bipartisan bill to add a small business advisory board to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. It came back costing $9 million--not billion, not trillion--$9 million.
Rather than allowing Members of both sides to come up with a way of paying for it, rather than cutting some bloated line of Federal bureaucracy that both sides could have agreed on to pay for $9 million, they are handcuffing the entire agency with effectively a policy rider pay-for that effectively restricts the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in its entirety rather than extending their arm to come up with a bipartisan pay-for. It should be easy to find a bipartisan pay-for for $9 million.
These concepts represent a stark difference between our parties: Democrats wanting to cut taxes for middle class and businesses, Republicans wanting to cut taxes for rich dead people and incentivize States to raise their sales tax.
These rules allow for consideration of a tax bill that only serves the needs of a few thousand Americans rather than cutting taxes for the middle class. It allows the consideration of a bill that moves us further away from tax reform by bailing out States like Texas. After a self-executing amendment, this rule would drastically cut the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
We should be having a conversation of comprehensive tax reform. We should be talking about how we can make the Tax Code work better for the middle class and small businesses and bring down rates. We should streamline our Tax Code and make our businesses more competitive.
I hope my colleagues oppose this rule and the underlying bill.
Mr. Speaker, yesterday was Equal Pay Day. If you defeat the previous question, I will offer an amendment to the rule that will allow the House to consider H.R. 16, the Paycheck Fairness Act.
In one of the wealthiest countries in the world, it is unacceptable that women are paid significantly less than men for filling the exact same role. It is long past time that Congress acted to close the wage gap. This bill would do exactly that.
I join Representative DeLauro in advocating we
finally enable women, support America's children and families, and end the crippling drag created by the gender pay gap on our Nation's economic prosperity.
Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent to insert the text of the amendment in the Record, along with extraneous material, immediately prior to the vote on the previous question.
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Mr. Speaker, I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' and defeat the previous question.
I urge a ``no'' vote on the rule and the underlying bills. Instead of talking about providing a tax cut for dead Americans, we talk about providing a tax cut for living Americans. Instead of bailing out States and encouraging them to raise their taxes even more, we give them an incentive to reduce their taxes and, at the same time, reduce the Federal tax rate.
Yes, we can--si, se puede. Si, se puede. Si, se puede.
I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on the underlying rule and bill.
I yield back the balance of my time.
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