WAYS & MEANS RANKING MEMBER JIM MCCRERY
MOTION TO RECOMMIT STATEMENT: H.R. 6049-
THE RENEWABLE ENERGY AND JOB CREATION ACT OF 2008
MAY 21, 2008
(REMARKS AS DELIVERED)

Mr. Speaker, this is a straightforward motion that offers Members of this House a simple choice:  Are you in favor of long-term extensions of these expiring tax provisions, and extending the all-important AMT patch, without raising taxes?

As we have discussed at length here today, the Majority’s bill unwisely adheres to their ill-advised paygo rules.  Thus, they have once again found themselves boxed into a corner, scouring the tax code for ways to fuel their agenda.  Whether that agenda involves additional spending, new tax incentives, or even just extensions of the low-tax policies that Republicans originally enacted during our time in the majority, the Democrats’ solution seems to always be the same: tax, tax, tax.

Today’s bill is no different.  While there is virtually no disagreement in this House that the expiring tax reductions contained in the underlying legislation need to be renewed, the two parties seem to have a major disagreement about whether revenue-raisers should be necessary to pay for them.  The majority’s bill represents a clear choice in favor of higher taxes.  Our motion to recommit, on the other hand, represents a clear choice in favor of extending current tax relief, without offsetting tax hikes.

Unlike the bill brought forward today by the Majority, which contains $55.5 billion in revenue-raisers, our motion contains no – repeat, no – tax increases.  Democrats were wrong to propose these sorts of offsetting tax hikes last year, and they are wrong again today.  If they stick with their misguided paygo rules, they’ll be wrong again in 2010 as well, when a huge number of critically important tax policies – ranging from the expanded $1,000 child credit to the lower rates on dividends and capital gains and lower individual rates – will expire, and the Majority’s paygo logic will require more than $3.5 trillion in tax increases simply to maintain current law.  That’s where paygo will take us.

This motion to recommit offers us a different path.  Not only does our motion reject the Majority’s tax hikes, it extends the bill’s positive provisions for considerably longer than the underlying bill does.  Indeed, our motion extends the package of expiring provisions – including all the expiring energy tax provisions – through the end of 2013.

So if you support the deduction for state and local sales taxes, here’s your chance to extend it for 6 years, not just one.

If you support the research and development tax credit, here’s your chance to extend it for 6 years, not just one.

In short, if you want to extend all of the important low-tax policies that expired last year – as well as the energy extenders that are set to expire just months from now – on a long term basis, here’s your chance.

This motion also gives Members the opportunity to extend one final, crucial provision that has gone completely unaddressed by the Majority: the AMT patch.

As we’ve highlighted throughout today’s debate, the Majority’s legislation is deafeningly silent on the urgently-needed AMT patch.  Their bill’s failure to patch the AMT for 2008 means that more than 25 million middle-class individuals and families are in line for a $61.5 billion tax hike next April – an average tax increase of more than $2,400 per taxpayer.

Our motion does what everyone knows must be done – it patches the AMT for 2008.  And it does so early in the year to help ensure that we avoid a repeat performance of the legislative meltdown engineered by the Majority last year, which prevented the 2007 patch from being enacted until the day after Christmas.  We need to patch the AMT, and we need to patch it now.  This motion gives us that opportunity.

I will close with just a word about process.  I suspect that we’ll hear from our friends on the other side that this motion will “kill the bill”.  Well Mr. Speaker, I would submit to you that you can’t kill a bill that is already dead. 

This bill is dead on arrival in the other body, Mr. Speaker.

Forty-one Senators signed a letter last month pledging to oppose tax bills that contain revenue-raising offsets.

On the very same day that Ways and Means reported out this bill last week, our colleagues across the Capitol passed a motion on the Senate floor instructing its conferees on the budget resolution to reject the House’s plan to raise $110 billion in taxes in order to pay for the extension of expiring provisions, including the AMT patch.  

And even if this legislation somehow got through the Senate, the President has clearly indicated that he would veto this bill.

You can’t kill a bill that’s already dead, Mr. Speaker.

Let’s use this motion to recommit to revive this bill.  Send it back to committee so that we can do our work in a bipartisan way and get it a bill passed and to the President that he will sign.

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