[Congressional Record Volume 158, Number 156 (Thursday, December 6, 2012)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7652-S7653]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                            WORK TO BE DONE

  Mr. BINGAMAN. Mr. President, I wish to take a few minutes to speak 
about what needs to be done before we leave town, before we shut down 
this session of the Congress. In my view, Congress needs to do five 
things before the end of the year to head off difficulties for our 
economy.
  First, as many have said, the House needs to take up and pass the 
middle-class tax cut--a bill that was already passed here in the 
Senate. That is the first item. That has been given a lot of attention.
  Second, both Houses of Congress need to head off most if not all of 
the scheduled sequester. I hope we are able to do that.
  Third, Congress should pass the tax extenders bill that was reported 
out of the Senate Finance Committee this summer, and that is going to 
be the subject of most of my comments this morning.
  Fourth, the Congress should repeal the SGR. This is the law that 
governs the rates of reimbursement to providers under the Medicare 
Program. Unless we repeal that law, we will have to once again patch 
the law, as we have done for many years now, with a so-called Medicare 
doc fix. I think the time has come to go ahead and repeal the law.
  The fifth item I want to mention is that Congress needs to give the 
President the power to raise the debt ceiling. At the same time, 
Congress should retain Congress's right to disapprove of that increase. 
But Secretary Geithner has made a proposal to the Congress that I 
believe makes good sense. It is based upon the arrangement that was 
agreed to that Senator McConnell had put forward in the 2011 debt 
ceiling crisis that we all lived through.
  Obviously, this is a significant to-do list. I do not intend to speak 
about all of these items. I would like to focus my remarks on the need 
for Congress to pass the extenders package of tax provisions. I think 
this has gotten too little attention. It deserves to be dealt with as a 
major component of the response to the so-called fiscal cliff. This is, 
in fact, the Family and Business Tax Cut Certainty Act of 2012.
  While I hope the negotiations to avert the fiscal cliff are 
successful, in my view, we should not wait for a grand bargain in order 
to finish our work on this important tax extender legislation.
  Tax extenders are different from the other fiscal cliff issues for 
three basic reasons. Let me describe those reasons.
  First, tax extenders are much less contentious than the other end-of-
year problems that need to be resolved. The tax extender bill on the 
Senate calendar has strong bipartisan support. In August the Finance 
Committee approved it by a large margin. We had support from six 
Republicans, including the ranking member, Senator Hatch. All 13 
Democrats supported it. I believe many more Republicans will vote for 
this legislation if it is brought up for consideration here in the 
Senate.
  The bill consists entirely of tax cuts. It should not be difficult to 
get Senators to vote for tax cuts, right before Christmases especially. 
Most of these tax cuts have solid bipartisan support. Many of these tax 
cuts will help the economy and will help the middle class. For example, 
the bill includes the deduction for tuition expenses, which is a $4.2 
billion tax cut for college students and their families. It includes 
the deduction for State and local sales taxes. This is a $4.4 billion 
tax cut, mainly for people who live in States that do not have an 
income tax, States such as Alaska and Florida and Nevada and Tennessee 
and Texas and South Dakota and Washington and Wyoming. It includes an 
increase in the section 179 expensing limits. This is a $2.4 billion 
tax cut for small businesses. And it includes an extension of the 
production tax credit for wind energy. This is a tax credit which has 
bipartisan support. It has helped create thousands of jobs.
  The production tax credit for wind energy is a vital component of our 
Nation's energy policy. Its extension is crucial to taking advantage of 
our domestic energy resources and fostering a vibrant and globally 
competitive industry.
  In just the several short years the wind industry has enjoyed this 
production tax credit, wind installations have grown immensely and 
manufacturing facilities have grown to where today we have over 400 of 
these manufacturing facilities that have sprung up around the country. 
The United States now has over 50,000 megawatts of wind capacity and 
the wind resources to grow that industry substantially more.
  My home State of New Mexico has the 10th best wind resources in the 
country, and has built close to 800 megawatts of capacity. While 
traditional fossil fuel plants use significant amounts of water to 
generate electricity, wind facilities use almost none--meaning that by 
promoting the development of wind power, we can conserve even more of 
that precious resource.
  The production tax credit for wind is set to expire in 3 weeks, as 
these other provisions are as well. With it, tens of thousands of jobs 
will be lost. In fact, most wind-related companies have already begun 
to lay off employees. Orders for new turbines and gearboxes have fallen 
off significantly, and new wind installations are expected to decline 
dramatically in 2013 unless Congress takes action.
  Uncertainty comes from many places for those who are in the business 
world. Congress should not continue to add to that uncertainty. 
Instead, we should extend the production tax credit for wind and extend 
the other expiring provisions passed by the Senate Finance Committee on 
a bipartisan basis.
  A second reason the tax extenders are different from other issues 
related to the fiscal cliff is that we have a tax extenders bill that 
has already been voted on in committee. By contrast, none of us know 
how the disagreements about the Bush tax cuts or sequestration will be 
resolved. Those negotiations are yet to conclude. But the tax extenders 
bill has already been negotiated in the Finance Committee. The 
committee agreed to omit provisions costing billions of dollars. It 
modified other provisions to make them work better or to scale back on 
them. The Finance Committee approved this bill by a vote of 19 to 5.
  That level of support means the Family and Business Tax Cut Certainty 
Act, or something close to it, is the tax extender bill the Senate is 
likely to pass this year. Six Republicans voted for it in committee. We 
would need just one more Republican vote to overcome a filibuster.
  Some Senators believe tax extenders should only be approved as part 
of a plan to do comprehensive tax reform. I would agree that each tax 
extender and each tax expenditure should be examined again during 
comprehensive tax reform. Each should be made permanent or phased out 
based on that review. But realistically, the Congress will not make 
those decisions before the end of this year. Tax reform will take the 
better part of a year to accomplish or perhaps even longer. We will 
need to pass an extenders bill before then, and we have one before us 
today that is worthy of being passed.
  A third reason we should pass the tax extenders package now and not 
wait

[[Page S7653]]

until the eleventh hour is that waiting could force the IRS to delay 
the tax filing season by 10 weeks or more for millions of Americans. In 
fact, we are at the eleventh hour. I should amend my comments to make 
that point very clear. This need for the IRS to delay the tax filing 
season is because the bill extends many provisions that expired at the 
end of 2011. They need to be extended for 2012 before people file their 
tax returns beginning in January of 2013. After Congress acts--if it 
acts--the IRS needs weeks to finalize tax forms and instruction books 
and to program computers to process the returns.
  The IRS tells us that the alternative minimum tax, which is part of 
this tax extender package, would cause the biggest delay in the filing 
of new returns because of the number of tax credits and deductions that 
interact with the alternative minimum tax.
  In 2010, when Congress waited until December to patch the alternative 
minimum tax, 10 million taxpayers had to delay their filings the next 
year. In 2007, after another eleventh-hour patch, 13 million taxpayers 
were delayed. Both the patches in 2007 and 2010 were enacted in 
December. So if we do not patch the AMT--alternative minimum tax--until 
January, the consequences will be even more severe.
  At some point, IRS would have to choose between two options.
  Its first option is to postpone the filing season for anyone who 
could be subject to the AMT and hope that Congress enacts a patch. 
Between 30 million and 60 million people would have to wait to learn 
how much tax they owe or whether they will get a refund.
  The second option is for IRS to proceed with the filing season 
without the AMT patch. This option is even worse. It would mean 28 
million more taxpayers would be subject to the AMT, and they would have 
to pay $98 billion more in tax for 2012. These are middle-class 
Americans. Without the patch, the AMT will apply to individuals who 
earn more than $33,750 in 2012 and couples who earn more than $45,000. 
Without the patch, 46 percent of couples filing joint returns would owe 
alternative minimum tax, instead of six percent if we enact the patch.
  This would be a disaster for the middle class. This is the risk we 
are taking if we delay passing tax extenders.
  I urge my colleagues to take up and pass this important legislation, 
send it to the House so they can do the same, and send it to the 
President before this Congress finishes its work.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The senior Senator from Iowa is recognized.

                          ____________________