[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 156 (2010), Part 8]
[Senate]
[Pages 11839-11840]
[From the U.S. 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 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

[[Page 11840]]

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.
  Those are the reasons that I oppose these tax increases.

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