[Congressional Record Volume 161, Number 53 (Tuesday, April 14, 2015)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2174-S2175]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




          STATEMENTS ON INTRODUCED BILLS AND JOINT RESOLUTIONS

      By Mr. LEAHY (for himself, Mr. Casey, Mr. McCain, Mr. Blunt, Ms. 
        Stabenow, and Mr. Cochran):
  S. 930. A bill to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to 
permanently extend and expand the charitable deduction for 
contributions of food inventory; to the Committee on Finance.
  Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, millions of Americans are racing against 
the clock to meet tomorrow's midnight deadline to file their taxes. In 
the closing hours of the 113th Congress, we came together to approve 
legislation to extend for 1 year, just 1 year, several tax credits that 
are essential to small businesses and middleclass families. A 1 year 
extension of these tax credits was surely welcomed by many, but such a 
short extension leaves in place the uncertainty needed by so many 
families and small businesses as they look ahead to the coming year to 
plan large purchases, expansions, new home purchases, or even a family 
vacation. I hope that Congress will tackle meaningful tax reform 
legislation this year, so that we can protect hardworking families, 
hold corporations accountable, incentivize environmental protections, 
and encourage charitable giving.
  So today, ahead of Tax Day, I am introducing three commonsense 
proposals, S. 930, S. 931, and S. 932, that will provide reasonable tax 
credits for such things as surplus food donations, art donations, and 
preservation of our historic buildings in communities and villages 
across the country.
  The bipartisan Good Samaritan Hunger Relief Tax Incentive Extension 
Act expands upon a proven and effective tax incentive to encourage 
businesses and farms to donate surplus food to their local food banks. 
A 2011 study by the U.S. Department of Agriculture found that demand on 
food banks across the country has risen dramatically during and since 
the recent economic recession, with more than 50 million Americans 
living in food insecure households. Despite this, as much as 40 percent 
of the food that is produced, grown and transported in the United 
States goes unused as some businesses find it too costly to donate the 
excess food, amounting to 70 billion pounds of wasted food each year.
  The Good Samaritan Hunger Relief Tax Incentive Act addresses this by 
permanently extending the same tax incentives to donate food now 
available to corporations to all businesses, including small 
businesses, farmers, ranchers and restaurant owners--many of whom often 
have large amounts of fresh food to donate. Since the most recent 
extension of this tax incentive through 2013, the restaurant industry 
alone experienced a 137 percent increase in the pounds of food donated. 
This bill--cosponsored by Senators Cochran, Stabenow, McCain, Casey, 
and Blunt, is supported by many organizations including Feeding 
America, the American Farm Bureau Federation, the Food Marketing 
Institute, Grocery Manufacturers Association, the National Restaurant 
Association, Hunger Free Vermont, and the Vermont Food Bank.
  The Artist-Museum Partnership Act was first introduced in 2000. This 
legislation would preserve cherished art works for the public by 
allowing artists to take a fair market deduction for works they donate 
to museums, libraries, colleges and other public institutions. Under 
current law, artists that donate their created work may only deduct the 
cost of supplies, while a collector of the same work that donates it

[[Page S2175]]

to qualified charitable institutions is allowed to take a tax deduction 
equal to the fair market value of the donated work.
  Prior to 1969, artists and collectors alike were able to take a 
deduction equivalent to the fair market value of a work. Congress 
changed the law for artists more than 30 years ago in response to the 
perception that some taxpayers were taking advantage of the law by 
inflating the market value of self-created works. Since the law was 
changed with respect to artists, fewer and fewer of them have donated 
their works to museums and cultural institutions, while the government 
has cut down significantly on the abuse of fair market value 
determinations. The Artist-Museum Partnership Act would restore the law 
to pre-1969 and allow artists who donate their own paintings, 
manuscripts, compositions, or scholarly compositions to be subject to 
the same new rules that all taxpayers or collectors who donate such 
works follow.
  The Artist-Museum Partnership Act is supported by such organizations 
as the Association of Art Museum Directors, American Alliance of 
Museums, Americans for the Arts, League of American Orchestras, OPERA 
America, Dance/USA, National Assembly of State Arts Agencies, the 
Vermont Arts Counsel, and the Shelburne Museum.
  Finally, the Historic Downtown and Preservation and Access Act would 
create a refundable tax credit for the installation of fire sprinklers 
and elevators in older, multi-use buildings in historic downtowns. Each 
year fire destroys hundreds of vulnerable historic buildings that serve 
as the anchors of America's vibrant villages and downtowns, in many 
cases resulting in injury or loss of life. The Historic Downtown and 
Preservation and Access Act creates a 50 percent refundable tax credit 
capped at $50,000 to encourage the installation of upfront but costly 
sprinkler systems in order to help prevent the loss of life, reduce 
property damage, and decrease Federal expenditures on rebuilding 
efforts after these fires.
  This bill also incentivizes the installation of elevators in order to 
encourage the use of upper story office, retail, and housing space in 
historic downtown buildings that would otherwise go unused due to 
inaccessibility. The new refundable tax credit, modeled after the State 
of Vermont's highly successful downtown historic tax credit, would 
allow private entities with little tax liability and nonprofits alike 
to install these important property and life-saving devices in historic 
buildings.
  Congress must have a meaningful debate about how we can best reform, 
simplify, and streamline our complicated tax system. These are just a 
few of the proposals I hope Congress will consider in this debate. It 
is time we start working to incentivize programs that stand to best 
help our communities, rather than protect the wealthiest among us from 
paying their fair share.
  Mr. McCAIN. Mr. President, I am proud to be an original cosponsor of 
the Good Samaritan Hunger Relief Act of 2015, which was introduced 
today by Senator Patrick Leahy and cosponsored by Senators Bob Casey, 
Thad Cochran, Debbie Stabenow, and Roy Blunt.
  This bipartisan bill would benefit food banks and hunger charities 
around the nation. At its core, the bill would provide tax incentives 
for small and medium business who donate food or resources to food 
banks. This means restaurants, farms, and other food providers can do 
even more in their local communities to help fight hunger.
  Speaking for my state, I can tell you that hunger is a very real 
problem in Arizona. Currently about one in five Arizonans live below 
the poverty line. In some parts of the State, one-in-four children and 
one-in-seven seniors live in poverty--particularly on Indian 
reservations where unemployment rates approach 75 percent, and in 
minority communities. Often these individuals are left to wonder where 
their next meal will come from.
  I am proud that Phoenix, Arizona is home to the world's first food 
bank, the St. Mary's Food Bank. Since its founding in 1967, St. Mary's 
has grown into a leading hunger organization and has distributed more 
than 700 million pounds of food to people all over Arizona.
  I believe this bill's projected cost to the Treasury can be offset by 
reducing unnecessary and wasteful agriculture subsidies. I would 
encourage my colleagues to look at the most recent Farm Bill that was 
signed into law in 2013 and is projected to cost over $996 billion over 
the next 10 years. It is fraught with special interest farm subsidies 
that we could instead reduce or terminate and use the savings to pay 
for the important tax incentive programs provided by this bill.
  For example, the Farm Bill includes crop insurance subsidies for 
tobacco products, which are estimated to cost taxpayers $33 million 
each year. It also provides for the USDA Market Access Program, which 
has long been criticized by taxpayer watchdogs as a form of corporate 
welfare because it spends roughly $200 million annually to subsidize 
advertising, market research and trade shows for large corporations 
overseas. The Farm Bill also includes an obscure set of USDA grants 
that subsidizes scientific research for large agriculture operations, 
such as $25 million earmarked for the study of the health benefits of 
lima beans and peas, and $1.3 million set-aside for genome sequencing 
of Christmas trees. Further, it calls for the creation of a USDA 
Catfish Office, which I have long criticized along with the Government 
Accountability Office and the Obama administration for being wasteful 
and duplicative of FDA's catfish inspection program and will ultimately 
cost the American taxpayer $14 million a year. These are just a few of 
the many wasteful Farm Bill programs that could be eliminated to offset 
the estimated costs of our proposed tax incentive legislation.
  I encourage my colleagues to support this legislation and consider 
these and other Farm Bill spending offsets as the bill moves through 
the legislative process.

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