[Congressional Record Volume 165, Number 82 (Thursday, May 16, 2019)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2905-S2906]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
Tax Provisions
Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, some time ago, specifically February 28,
I came to the Senate to visit with my colleagues about the more than
two dozen tax provisions that expired at the end of 2017. That same
day, I joined with Finance Committee Ranking Member Wyden of Oregon to
introduce a bill entitled ``Tax Extender Disaster Relief Act of 2019''
to extend these two dozen tax provisions through 2019.
I very much thank Ranking Member Wyden for his cooperation on this
effort. Actually, we have a lot of cooperation on a lot of different
subjects within the Finance Committee.
Now, unfortunately, we are still waiting on House Democrats to send
us a tax bill that includes those provisions so taxpayers who have
relied on them can finish their 2018 tax returns. I have had some
discussions with the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, and I
don't have any reason to believe he doesn't believe some of these
extenders should be extended. I suppose because they are new to run the
House of Representatives, and they have dissension within their own
caucus, it takes a while to get an active group of people pushing for
this particular legislation, but it ought to be easy to happen because
these tax provisions have traditionally been extended every 2 or 3
years over the last 20 years--maybe longer than that in some cases.
I remind my colleagues in the House of Representatives that taxpayers
have all but run out of time. Part of my purpose in introducing the Tax
Extender and Disaster Relief Act way back in February was to provide
additional certainty for the current year for those businesses that
have made use of these tax credits in the past.
I noted that in most cases, Congress enacted those provisions to
provide an incentive for taxpayers to engage in certain actions like
investment and job creation.
In February, I also reminded my colleagues that those incentives are
most effective when taxpayers can rely on them during the tax year. For
the most part, over the last three decades, they have had that
certainty by the renewal of these tax provisions.
Regrettably, we are now one-third of the way through 2019 with no
certainty for affected taxpayers in sight. I also said, in my February
remarks, that my broader objective of including an extension through
2019 was so we could have some maneuvering room to examine the
temporary provisions overall and try to identify longer term
solutions. Through efforts in the last Congress, we identified
potential long-term solutions for two of them--the short-line railroad
tax credit and the biodiesel tax credit--but we have the opportunity
now to do more.
While we continue to try to help taxpayers who still need to resolve
their 2018 tax returns, we need to press ahead on more permanent
solutions so we can end Congress's continual bad habit of waiting until
the eleventh hour or months after to extend temporary tax policy.
Accordingly, today, I am announcing, along with Ranking Member Wyden,
that the Finance Committee will form several bipartisan task forces to
examine the temporary tax policies. These task forces will consist of
members of the Finance Committee and will focus on provisions that
expired or will expire between December 31, 2017, and December 31 of
this year. That is a total of 42 expiring tax provisions.
Each task force will be charged with examining temporary tax policies
within one of five identified issue areas. These issue areas are:
workforce and community development, health taxes, energy, business
cost recovery, and a combined group consisting of individual, excise
taxes, and other temporary policies.
We will ask the task forces to work with the stakeholders, other
Senate offices, and interested parties to consider the original
purposes of the policies and whether the need for the provisions
continues today. If so, we will ask the task force to identify possible
solutions that would provide long-term certainty in these areas. That
may mean the credit or deduction phases out over a period of years to
provide an affected
[[Page S2906]]
industry a glide path to self-sufficiency. In other cases, it may mean
the provision could be scaled back while still providing a sufficient
benefit for the affected industry or taxpayers in exchange for long-
term certainty. If there is little or no case for continuing the
temporary policy, the task force should consider whether the provision
should be eliminated.
There may also be provisions that the task force identifies that
should be extended without reform. For these provisions, the task force
will have to consider whether a continued short-term extension is
sufficient to achieve the policy goals, whether a longer term extension
is desirable to force a future Congress to reevaluate the provision
down the road, or if permanency is warranted.
This is particularly relevant for the temporary tax policies relating
to healthcare. For these, we will ask the task force to focus on
whether the tax policy should be extended and for what duration. Of
course, we will leave the evaluation of the underlying healthcare
policy to the health experts.
In all, the task forces will work to identify reform proposals, like
those identified for the short-line railroad tax credit and the
biodiesel tax credit last year, so we can end the policy of having
Congress always kick the can down the road each time, or, as is the
case with 2018, an even worse policy of doing the kicking months after
the year has ended.
If Congress is going to use temporary tax policy, taxpayers should be
able to count on it for the intended period. Moreover, the intended
policy should be clear so that taxpayers do not fall into the trap of
relying on a provision simply because Congress has created the
expectation that the provisions will be consistently extended even well
after the fact.
Taxpayers who have been relying on these provisions have been doing
what Congress has wanted them to do. That happens to be free-market
investing in certain types of property, hiring new employees, or taking
other types of action. We shouldn't punish them for doing what Congress
intended with these tax provisions.
Additionally, we will have a sixth task force to examine the related
issue of temporary disaster tax relief. It will consider whether we
should have a core set of permanent proposals so taxpayers who have
suffered through devastating disasters--like with the floods, most
recently, in my home State of Iowa--don't have to wait for Congress to
act before they can start rebuilding their lives, their small
businesses, or their farms.
We have asked the task forces to begin their work right away, and we
expect them to complete their efforts by the end of June. This should
provide adequate time to identify possible long-term solutions that
could be enacted this year to end the annual extenders drama and
provide certainty to the taxpayers who utilize those provisions.
We will continue to work with the House of Representatives to resolve
the situation with respect to the 2018 temporary policies and to
provide relief for all of those affected by the disasters of 2018 and
so far this year, but we shouldn't wait any longer to start laying the
groundwork to deal with all of these temporary tax policies as
permanently as possible.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Washington.
Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I thank the chairman of the Finance
Committee, Senator Grassley, for his leadership on these issues. I look
forward to working with him on the assigned task forces and to working
hard on very important issues that he and I have been working on in the
past--from biodiesel, to energy policy, to a variety of things. I thank
him for that.