[Congressional Record Volume 156, Number 98 (Monday, June 28, 2010)]
[Senate]
[Pages S5484-S5486]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
TAX EXTENDERS BILL
Mr. GRASSLEY. Madam President, I was surprised to see the Senate
majority leader on Friday morning, in some of the harshest possible
language, make the misleading assertion that Senate Republicans oppose
the underlying policy in the tax extenders bill. His statement
conveniently ignored the basic reason nearly every Republican for
opposing the Democratic leadership's substitute. It was opposed to
because it perpetuated the large deficit spending that has become the
modus operandi of the Democratic leadership.
The way to a bipartisan agreement is to follow the path set 1 week
ago
[[Page S5485]]
today. Just 1 week ago, the Senate passed a bill that extended the so-
called Medicare doc fix for several months.
The bill was fully offset. It was paid for. It did not add to the
deficit. Every Republican Senator supported that fiscally responsible
approach. I would like to make a couple of points on the process
employed by the Democratic leadership. The majority leader's comments
this morning are typical of the dysfunctional way that these routine
extenders have been unnecessarily delayed by the strategy and tactics
of the Democratic leadership.
What I find surprising is that we took up a package, the fourth in
the latest series, that, like previous exercises, absolutely belongs to
the Senate Democratic leadership. That is to say they continued to
refuse to take up a bipartisan package that I put together with Finance
Committee Chairman Baucus. To be sure, some of the structure reflected
the agreement my friend, the chairman and I reached.
I was under the impression that the Senate Democratic leadership was
genuine in its desire to work on a bipartisan basis, but clearly I was
mistaken. Although the Senate Democratic leadership was highly involved
in the development of a bipartisan bill, they arbitrarily decided to
replace it with a bill that skews toward their liberal wing.
My second comment goes to the way in which these expiring tax
provisions have been described by many on the other side, including
those in the Democratic leadership. If you rolled the videotape back a
few months or so ago, you would hear a lot of disparaging comments
about these routine, bipartisan extenders. From my perspective, those
comments were made in an effort to sully the bipartisan agreement
reached by Chairman Baucus and me.
If you take a look at newspaper accounts of that period, you'd come
away with the impression that the tax extenders are partisan pork for
Republicans. A representative sample comes from one report, which
describes the bipartisan bill as ``an extension of soon-to-expire tax
breaks that are highly beneficial to major corporations, known as tax
extenders, as well as other corporate giveaways that had been designed
to win GOP support.'' The Washington Post included this attribution to
the Senate Democratic leadership in an article at that time: ``We're
pretty close,'' [the majority leader] said Friday during a television
appearance in Nevada, adding that he thought ``fat cats'' would have
benefitted too much from the larger Baucus-Grassley bill.''
The portrait that was painted by certain members of the majority in
some press reports was inaccurate.
For one thing the tax extenders include provisions such as the
deduction for qualified tuition and related expenses and also the
deduction for certain expenses of elementary and secondary school
teachers. If you are going to school or if you are a grade school
teacher, the Senate Democratic leadership apparently viewed you as a
fat cat. If your house was destroyed in a recent natural disaster and
you still need any of the temporary disaster relief provisions
contained in the extenders package, too bad, because helping you would
amount to a corporate giveaway in the eyes of some.
The tax extenders have been routinely passed repeatedly because they
are bipartisan and very popular. Democrats have consistently voted in
favor of extending these tax provisions. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi
released a very strong statement upon House passage of tax extenders in
December of 2009, saying this was ``good for businesses, good for
homeowners, and good for our communities.'' December of 2009 was not
very long ago. In 2006, the then-Democratic leader released a
blistering statement ``after Bush Republicans in the Senate blocked
passage of critical tax extenders'' because ``American families and
businesses are paying the price because this Do Nothing Republican
Congress refuses to extend important tax breaks.''
Recent bipartisan votes in the Senate on extending expiring tax
provisions have come in the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of
2008, the Tax Relief and Health Care Act of 2006, which passed the
Senate by unanimous consent and the Working Families Tax Relief Act of
2004, which originally passed the Senate by voice vote, although the
conference report only received 92 votes in favor and a whopping 3
against. According to the non-partisan Congressional Research Service,
extension of several of these provisions go back even further,
including the Tax Relief Extension Act of 1999, which again passed the
Senate by unanimous consent, but lost 1 vote on the conference report.
One Member on the other side said ``Our side isn't sure that the
Republicans are real interested in developing good policy and to move
forward together. Instead, they are more inclined to play rope-a-dope
again, My own view is, let's test them.'' Another Member of this large
59-vote majority exclaimed, ``It looks more like a tax bill than a jobs
bill to me. What the Democratic Caucus is going to put on the floor is
something that's more focused on job creation than on tax breaks.''
Reading those comments I found myself scratching my head. The only
explanation for this behavior is that certain senators decided last
week that it serves a deeply partisan goal to slander what have been
for several years bipartisan and popular tax provisions benefitting
many different people. The Washington Post article I quoted from
earlier includes a statement from a Senate Democratic leadership aide
saying that ``No decisions have been made, but anyone expecting us
immediately to go back to a bill that includes tax extenders will be
sorely disappointed.''
You can imagine, that today, after considering these comments, I am
really scratching my head. We have before us the expiring tax and
health provisions that were disparaged just a short time ago. Have they
morphed from corporate tax pork? Have they suddenly re-acquired their
bipartisan character? Are these time-sensitive items, now expired for
more than 2 months, suddenly jobs-related?
Madam President, I also want to correct the record regarding a
statement made last Thursday night by the senior Senator from Illinois.
He said that the international tax increases that the Democrats have
called for in the extenders bill would stop companies from sending jobs
overseas. If only these international tax increases would do that, I
would be at the front of the line, doing what I could to pass them.
But, unfortunately, that is not what they would do. I would like to
briefly describe why, if anything, these international tax increases
would actually tend to hurt the job market here at home in America.
Quite to the contrary of the complaint by the senior Senator from
Illinois, these international tax increases may make American
businesses less competitive in the global marketplace. Increased taxes
increase the cost of doing business. Those tax increases are targeted
only at U.S. companies on their business abroad. They are not aimed at
foreign companies with which the U.S. companies are competing side-by-
side. Guess what. The cost must be absorbed by the U.S. company. The
cost of these tax increases may make it less likely that American
businesses will hire. Instead German, or Indian, or Chinese companies
will out-compete and thus be hiring more. If the U.S. taxes the foreign
subsidiaries of U.S. parent companies at ever higher rates, the result
won't be jobs kept here at home.
No, the result will instead be that the U.S. will become a less and
less attractive place to have a parent company, to have a global
headquarters. This will result in less, not more, but less jobs here in
America.
But that is certainly not my only objection. Not only could these
international tax increases result in less American jobs, but these
proposed tax increases have not had adequate vetting. In some cases,
the proposed tax increases would actually be retroactive. These tax
increases would be permanent tax increases, meant to pay for temporary
tax reductions--a strange miss-match. If these international tax
increases really are loophole closers, then it is squandering them to
use them for such temporary provisions, rather than to use them to pay
for corporate tax reform.
Finally, the business community--that is, the hiring sector--has
reacted quite negatively to this bill, even though the bill also
contains the tax extenders that the business community wants.
[[Page S5486]]
Those are the reasons that I oppose these tax increases.
____________________