[Congressional Record Volume 158, Number 56 (Wednesday, April 18, 2012)]
[House]
[Pages H1967-H1969]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
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SMALL BUSINESS TAX CUT ACT
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under the Speaker's announced policy of
January 5, 2011, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Chabot) is recognized for
28 minutes as the designee of the majority leader.
Mr. CHABOT. Thank you very much, Mr. Speaker. I appreciate that, and
I really appreciate Chairman Graves making it possible for so many of
us who care about small business in this country this evening to take a
little time to talk about how important it is and what we ought to be
doing to support our small business folks all over the country. After
all, 70 percent of the jobs that are created historically in the
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American economy aren't the big guys. They're not the huge
corporations, although we want them to do well and hire a lot of
people. But even though a lot of people think it's the huge
corporations that are doing all the hiring, it's really small business
folks. It's mom-and-pops places. It's people that have fewer than 500
employees. Oftentimes, fewer than 50. Sometimes it's 5, or even 1.
These are the folks that historically have created 70 percent of the
jobs.
And, unfortunately, I would argue that this administration and the
policies that have been implemented by many of the folks on the other
side of the aisle, unfortunately, have made it very challenging to
these small businesses to be successful and to hire additional
employees. And there's a whole range of issues that we're going to talk
about this evening. We have limited time, so I'm going to turn it over
to a couple of my colleagues.
I would like to first recognize the gentleman from Arizona, David
Schweikert, who's been a leader in trying to come up with policies that
will be supportive for small businesses in this country.
Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Mr. Speaker, to my friend, thank you for yielding me
a few minutes here.
One of the reasons I'm standing here is, over the last week we've
heard the President talk about what we call the Buffett rule, and the
Senate, and its failure to move the Buffett rule--thank heaven. And
realizing, for a lot of Americans, they don't understand this is, A,
it's absolutely pretend math. But it's also meant as an absolute attack
on the entrepreneurs, on the wealth creators and the people that create
jobs and economic growth in this country.
So I thought I would do another one of my clocks to try to help folks
understand the reality of the math. Think about this. We borrow about
$3.5 billion every single day, which is actually an improvement from
where we've been, but $3.5 billion every day. There's 1,440 minutes in
a day. So we were trying to figure out how do you explain how little
the Buffett rule does to help us in our debt crisis but how much damage
it will ultimately do to our economic growth.
And where this came from is 2 days ago my phone rang, and I had a
gentleman from my district who was absolutely insistent that the
Buffett rule would solve the debt problem. So we made a clock. And here
it is. If you think about how much we borrow in a single day--that $3.5
billion in a day--how much would the Buffett rule, with our math, how
much of that day would it cover of the debt? Remember, 1,440 minutes in
a day. It would cover 3\1/2\ minutes of borrowing in a day. It's
fantasy.
So why does the left, why does this President engage in this sort of
political theater? Maybe because it's good politics. But it's really
crappy math.
And here's the reality of our future, and this keeps coming back, and
why we so desperately have to do those things to get our small
businesses to start hiring and growing. But we here in the Federal
Government, we here in Congress, are going to have to deal with a
reality that's coming at us like a freight train. This year, 63 percent
of all of our spending is Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, interest
on the debt, veterans' benefits. In 4\1/2\ years--so the 2017 budget--
75 percent of all of our spending will be what we call the mandatory--
the entitlement.
It is consuming us as a people. Your government is very quickly
becoming a health insurer with a shrinking army. We need the President
to stop pushing policies that attack our job-creation engines. The
fantasy of things like the Buffett rule may be great politics but it's
not good for this country.
Mr. CHABOT. I thank the gentleman.
Reclaiming my time, the gentleman mentioned the Buffett rule. And
maybe I'll talk about that as well very briefly here because I think
the gentleman from Arizona did a great job in showing that this is
really all about politics, is all this so-called Buffett rule policy
is.
There's a gentleman named Charles Krauthammer who happens to be, I
believe, one of the smartest, most interesting political commentators
or pundits in the land. I saw him talk about the Buffett rule and what
a farce it is the other evening, and he illustrated it a little bit
differently but it's the same type of illustration. One that brings it,
I think, down to Earth.
He had the numbers run on this from a very reputable organization.
And if the dollars were collected on the so-called Buffett tax for the
next 250 years--so the next 250 years this tax is collected--and he
commented that that is longer than the Republic has been in existence,
the United States of America. This is longer than our existence. So you
collect it for the next 250 years. Do you know how much we would
actually collect from that relative to the deficit, which is what this
is supposed to do, pay down the deficit? It wouldn't cover last year's
deficit alone. So not one year of the Obama deficit would be covered by
the so-called Buffett rule if we collected it for 250 years. So it's
nothing but pure politics. Don't be fooled by that.
Now, Mr. Speaker, as small businesses across the country fight to
make ends meet and stay out of debt, the Federal Government continues
to dig itself into a hole with its exorbitant spending habits. Small
businesses are burdened with massive regulations brought on by
ObamaCare. They're further plagued by the threat of tax increases--
significant tax increases--next year, should the relief from the 2001
and 2003 tax cuts be allowed to expire. And that's what some people,
particular those on the other side of the aisle, would like to happen.
They would like the tax cuts to go away. In other words, if tax cuts go
away, taxes go up. And this wasn't on the very wealthy. It was on
virtually all Americans--middle class folks, people that take advantage
of the child tax credit, and a whole range of people in the middle. And
yes, at upper income levels as well.
So a lot of folks would be hit very hard with this, particularly
small business folks, because the so-called wealth in this country,
many of them are small business folks. Again, as I mentioned before, 70
percent of the jobs in this country are created by those folks. So if
you're trying to bring the unemployment rate down, why put additional
burden on the people that are actually creating the jobs?
Mr. Speaker, tax issues are the single most significant set of
regulatory burdens for most small businesses. A recent NFIB Research
Foundation study--the NFIB, by the way, is the National Federation of
Independent Businesses--found that 4 of the top 10 small business
problems were tax-related. Just this week, struggling families and
businesses were forced to give the government more of their hard-earned
money to satisfy the hungry appetite of government bureaucracies.
Mr. Speaker, enough is enough. Confiscatory tax rates and fiscal
irresponsibility have got to come to an end. Small businesses across
the country are fighting to keep their doors open and keep their lights
on. It's shameful for the Federal Government to expect these
hardworking taxpayers to foot the bill for GSA excursions to Las Vegas
and inept corporate schemes like Solyndra while the backbone of our
economy, which is the small businesses, continues to suffer. After all,
American small businesses are responsible, as I said before, for 70
percent of the jobs that are created in this country. Why do we want to
continue to make life so difficult for them? Why are they the target
for the left in this House so often?
The America I know is a Nation where hard work creates opportunities
for success. After all, that's what our forefathers were seeking in the
first place. At the founding of our Nation, small businessowners came
to this land to escape excessive taxation and cumbersome regulation.
These were families of farmers and builders, traders, inventors, and
merchants. It's disheartening that today it's our very own government
that's creating the job-killing taxation and regulation.
Our economy is still struggling to rebound from the worst recession
since the Great Depression, and we must support the engine that will
propel America forward. This engine has always been fueled by hard work
and an economic climate that rewards success.
When I'm back home in my district in greater Cincinnati, I make a
point to frequently meet with small businessowners to talk about their
successes as well as their struggles. I too often hear that the burden
of taxes and regulations, coupled with great uncertainty, is keeping
these businesses
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from growing, and in many cases forcing many of them to close their
doors altogether.
That's why I'm a cosponsor of H.R. 9, the Small Business Tax Cut Act.
If passed, this legislation would amend the Internal Revenue Code to
allow American businesses a tax deduction of 20 percent. This is common
sense. It's a fair bill that would help small businessowners to keep
more of what they have earned to invest in expansion and hiring. That's
the important thing--hiring Americans who now need those jobs.
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We still have over 8 percent that are unemployed. I urge my
colleagues to support this critical legislation that will be a shot in
the arm to small businesses across the Nation. If there are any of my
colleagues that would have any additional things they would like to
say, we would welcome them at this time.
May I ask the Speaker how much time we have remaining.
The SPEAKER pro tempore. The gentleman from Ohio has 16 minutes
remaining.
Mr. CHABOT. One of the other issues that we haven't covered too much
here, and let me talk about this very briefly, is the impact that the
high cost of energy, gasoline in particular, what kind of difficulty
that's causing small businesses across the country, because I hear this
all the time from my small business constituents. It's not surprising
that energy prices, and gas prices in particular, have been going up so
much. They're double--the gas prices alone at the pump are double what
they were when the Obama administration took over, and that's most
unfortunate.
But it's really not surprising when you consider the person that
President Obama appointed to be the head of energy in this country. The
chief mind about energy and what we should do about it is the Secretary
of Energy, Steven Chu. Steven Chu a couple of months before President
Obama appointed him to that position said that it was his goal, what we
ought to try to do, what we ought to strive for, is to raise the price
of gasoline in this country, energy costs, prices of gasoline, for
example, to European levels. Think of that.
Now they've got approximately, it depends on the country you're
talking about, but it's around $9 a gallon--they do liters over there--
but it's about $9 a gallon. Now we're not there yet, but,
unfortunately, we're well on our way. It's approaching $4 back in my
district in Cincinnati. Here in Washington, just the other day, I had
to fill up, and it was about $4.50. So we're not quite there yet, but
we're approaching that. It's just unbelievable that we're in this
state.
But really I guess it shouldn't be surprising when you consider that
the person that President Obama put in control of our energy policy
here in this country said that it was his goal to get energy prices up
to European levels. As I say, unfortunately, we're well on our way.
Those gas prices, that's what the delivery trucks have to pay, the
small business folks that are delivering things to towns, or getting
products from other manufacturers. When they come in, they cost more.
So they can't charge the consumers as much; or if they do, they drive
those consumers away. So it's a vicious circle. We need to get energy
prices down in this country, and, unfortunately, they're on their way
up.
Another, I think, terrible mistake that this administration has made
is to basically shut the door on the Keystone pipeline. This is oil
sands from Canada, our friendly neighbor to the north. Our largest
supplier of petroleum, by the way, is Canada. And this is a pipeline
that would mean a significant number of jobs here in the United States,
tens of thousands of jobs. And if we ever needed jobs, we know it's
now. And those are good-paying jobs. Many of them are union jobs. But
the President has decided that, no, we're not going to make this
decision until maybe after the election. So tens of thousands of jobs
are at risk here.
Canada has been pretty clear about what they're going to do. If we're
not going to accept the oil in our country and build the pipeline, it's
quite likely that they'll go ahead and build the pipeline through
Canada to British Columbia and ship that oil that ought to be going to
the U.S. to China, who is one of our biggest competitors in a lot of
ways. And if you know anything about China, the environmental controls
that they have over there are far weaker than what we have in the
United States.
So if your goal is to make sure that you're protecting the
environment--and that's what many of the President's allies, the really
radical left-wing environmentalists who are fighting against the
Keystone pipeline--if you buy their argument, what they're saying is
they want to protect the environment by not having that oil come down
here and be refined in the gulf. But the controls we have here are much
stronger than what they are over in China. So you're not protecting the
environment at all or climate change or anything else if you're going
to allow them to spew out what they usually do in China when they
handle refining and manufacturing oftentimes and a lot of other things.
We all know how the administration supported an organization like
Solyndra and how much tax dollars were wasted there. And it goes on and
on. So the energy policy in this country by this administration is
impacting consumers. It's impacting you and me and anybody who goes and
fills up at the gas pump nowadays. But it's also adversely impacting
small businesses and job creation.
Another way that this administration, I believe, has made a mistake
which is causing these high prices is to continue to keep off limits
much of the Outer Continental Shelf. The gulf, the moratorium, was
disastrous for jobs in the gulf region after the spill down there; and,
yes, it should have been investigated very thoroughly. But a lot of
those oil derricks ended up leaving that area. They couldn't hold out
with that cost, the expensive capital costs over 6 months' period of
time, so they ended up off the coast of Brazil, for example.
And the President famously said, We'll be happy to buy your oil,
Brazil. Well, we can look at oil all around the world, but we ought to
be self-sufficient. And the President said he was interested in being
energy self-sufficient in this country, but his policies are anything
but that.
So he continues to put off limits much of the Outer Continental
Shelf. We had the disaster in the gulf, and ANWR up in Alaska the
administration has continued to put off limits. Now, we need to do all
these things in an environmentally safe manner. And we have the ability
to do that now. But, again, this administration has shut this down.
That's affecting all of us in higher and higher gas prices. So it's
long overdue for this administration to take a look, a long hard look,
at what their policies are doing to the country and to reconsider this,
to allow us to go after oil that we have available to us, clean coal,
natural gas, and a whole range of fuels that we have here in this
country so we don't have to be buying that from countries that
oftentimes don't have our best interests at heart.
It sends a lot of money over to regions and countries where,
unfortunately, a lot of terrorism that has endangered the world and
endangers us has come from. So those dollars aren't always spent in a
way that's going to help the United States. So, it's time for the
administration to turn its policies around.
Mr. Speaker, without further ado, I will yield back the balance of my
time.
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