THIS SEARCH THIS DOCUMENT THIS CR ISSUE GO TO
Next Hit Forward Next Document New CR Search
Prev Hit Back Prev Document HomePage
Hit List Best Sections Daily Digest Help
Doc Contents
[Page: H11207] GPO's PDF---
Under clause 7 of rule XII, sponsors were deleted from public bills and resolutions as follows:
H.R. 2335: Mr. INSLEE.
October 26, 2000
October 26, 2000
October 26, 2000
WASHINGTON, THURSDAY, OCTOBER 26, 2000
No. 136
[Page: H11209] GPO's PDF
WAIVING POINTS OF ORDER AGAINST CONFERENCE REPORT ON H.R. 2614, CERTIFIED DEVELOPMENT COMPANY PROGRAM IMPROVEMENTS ACT OF 2000
Mr. LINDER. Mr. Speaker, by direction of the Committee on Rules, I call up House Resolution 652 and ask for its immediate consideration.
The Clerk read the resolution, as follows:
H. Res. 652
Resolved, That upon adoption of this resolution it shall be in order to consider the conference report to accompany the bill (H.R. 2614) to amend the Small Business Investment Act to make improvements to the certified development company program, and for other purposes. All points of order against the conference report and against its consideration are waived. The conference report shall be considered as read.
The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. QUINN). The gentleman from Georgia (Mr. LINDER) is recognized for 1 hour.
[Time: 11:30]
Mr. LINDER. Mr. Speaker, for the purpose of debate only, I yield the customary 30 minutes to the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. MOAKLEY), pending which I yield myself such time as I might consume. During consideration of this resolution, all time yielded is for the purpose of debate only.
Mr. Speaker, H. Res. 652 is a typical rule providing for consideration of H.R. 2614, the conference report for the Certified Development Company Program Improvements Act of 2000.
The rule waives all points of order against the conference report and its consideration and provides the conference report shall be considered as read.
House rules provide 1 hour of general debate divided equally between the chairman and ranking minority member of the Committee on Small Business and one motion to recommit, with or without instructions, as is the right of the minority Members of the House.
I want to discuss briefly the conference report this rule makes in order. It includes important small business tax relief, community renewal and retirement security provisions, as well as
| NOTICE--OCTOBER 23, 2000
|
| A final issue of the Congressional Record for the 106th Congress, 2d Session, will be published on November 29, 2000, in order to permit Members to revise and extend their remarks. |
| All material for insertion must be signed by the Member and delivered to the respective offices of the Official Reporters of Debates (Room HT-60 or S-123 of the Capitol), Monday through Friday, between the hours of 10:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m. through November 28. The final issue will be dated November 29, 2000, and will be delivered on Friday, December 1, 2000. |
| None of the material printed in the final issue of the Congressional Record may contain subject matter, or relate to any event that occurred after the sine die date. |
| Senators' statements should also be submitted electronically, either on a disk to accompany the signed statement, or by e-mail to the Official Reporters of Debates at ``Records@Reporters''. |
| Members of the House of Representatives' statements may also be submitted electronically by e-mail, to accompany the signed statement, and formatted according to the instructions for the Extensions of Remarks template at http://clerkhouse.house.gov. The Official Reporters will transmit to GPO the template formatted electronic file only after receipt of, and authentication with, the hard copy, signed manuscript. Deliver statements to the Official Reporters in Room HT-60. |
| Members of Congress desiring to purchase reprints of material submitted for inclusion in the Congressional Record may do so by contacting the Congressional Printing Management Division, at the Government Printing Office, on 512-0224, between the hours of 8:00 a.m. and 4:00 p.m. daily. |
| By order of the Joint Committee on Printing. |
| WILLIAM M. THOMAS, Chairman. |
First, I am pleased that H.R. 2614 contains important tax relief provisions to help ease the burden on small businesses. It will also allow small businesses to expense additional qualifying properties costs, speed up the phase-in for deduction of meal expenses, and extend income-averaging benefits for farmers to include commercial fishermen. The conference report will also extend the Work Opportunity Tax Credit to assist businesses in hiring disadvantaged workers and repeal the installment method accounting requirement, an issue on which many of us have heard from our constituents.
H.R. 2614 also contains much needed provisions to increase retirement security for working people. It raises IRA limits to $5,000 and increases the contribution limits for 401(k)-type plans to $15,000. This bill also increases the portability of retirement plan assets and simplifies the pension system to encourage small businesses to offer pension plans.
This conference report also creates 40 Renewal Communities with targeted pro-growth tax benefits, regulatory relief, savings accounts, brownfields cleanup, and homeownership opportunities. It also includes a zero capital gains tax rate for business assets in these communities. These and other provisions will help ensure that all communities have an opportunity to share in our current prosperity.
I am pleased that conferees also included long-term care health care incentives to help make care more affordable and accessible. A substantial deduction for expenses related to long-term care and deductibility for the purchase of long-term care insurance policies will help ease the burden on seniors and their families.
H.R. 2614 also provides immediate 100 percent deductibility for health insurance for the self-employed and health care deductibility for people who purchase health care outside of their employer.
Finally, I am pleased that the conferees included the foreign sales corporation tax revision in this conference report. This provision will maintain current tax treatment for foreign sales corporation beneficiaries in a manner that the U.S. believes to be WTO compliant. I commend the conferees for the inclusion of this revision so important to our U.S. trade and our ability to compete in world markets.
This rule was favorably reported by the Committee on Rules. I urge my colleagues to support the rule today on the floor so that we may proceed with the general debate and consideration of this important conference report.
Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. MOAKLEY. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. LINDER), my friend, for yielding me the customary time, and I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, this rule really makes a mockery of the legislative process. I strongly urge my colleagues to oppose it, not only for the substance of the bill, but also for the process by which it is being brought to the floor.
Just to give my colleagues a little bit of the background, just before midnight last night, the Committee on Rules was informed that we would not meet until 8 o'clock this morning and that the House would stay in recess until we completed the consideration of these rules.
Once we met at 8 o'clock and filed the rules, the House adjourned immediately, and it immediately reconvened. This convoluted process has been in order to stretch one calendar day, the 26th of October, into two legislative days. The reason for that, Mr. Speaker, is because my Republican colleagues are then able to bring up a number of rules to the floor the very same day that they were reported out of the Committee on Rules. This way Members, particularly Democratic Members, have virtually no idea what is in these bills, especially, Mr. Speaker, since we were excluded from all the negotiations.
Mr. Speaker, this bill contains major unrelated provisions that look like everything but the kitchen sink. The tragic part, Mr. Speaker, it still does not do enough for high school construction or high school modernization.
Democrats want $25 billion in interest-free school construction financing over the next 10 years with prevailing wage protections. But, instead, this bill contains a school arbitrage provision which will only help schools that can delay school construction for 2 years.
Mr. Speaker, this is essentially a tax incentive to keep children in trailers and in dilapidated school buildings rather than building new schools. It contains only half of the Johnson-Rangel interest-free construction funding, and it leaves out the prevailing wage protections.
The first provision in the bill is a small business bill that is not particularly objectionable. The second is an excellent idea to raise the Federal minimum wage from $5.15 an hour to $6.15 an hour over 2 years.
Mr. Speaker, of the 10 million people who work for minimum wages in this country, most of them are women and minorities. They take care of our young children. They take care of our elderly parents. They cook our meals. They pump our gas. They clean our offices. They really deserve a raise.
But since this long overdue raise is being included in an otherwise bad bill, it very well might not get signed into law, and that might be just the way that my Republican colleagues want it.
The third provision is a package of tax cuts designed primarily to benefit the very rich, which will endanger our Social Security and Medicare by spending the budget surplus.
In order to enact the third provision of the bill, it also includes a fourth provision which would exempt, listen closely, this would exempt this enormous tax cut for the rich from the pay-go sequester that would automatically force cuts in Medicare, student loans and farm programs.
Essentially, Mr. Speaker, my Republican colleagues are turning off the effects of the current law to pass their tax cuts for the rich, even though these tax cuts will have a disastrous effect on the economy. As far as the pay-go scorecard goes, thanks to this bill, these tax cuts are free and so is every other entitlement increase and tax cut that we do in this Congress.
Mr. Speaker, the fifth provision is known as the balanced budget amendment fix. When my Republican colleagues passed the so-called balanced budget, they caused very dangerous cuts in Medicare. Hospitals, many of them in my district, found themselves faced with bankruptcy. Everyone, including my Republican colleagues, knew they had made a mistake and they needed to fix it.
So in response, this bill will replace some of the money that they so carelessly cut, but it is tilted dramatically in favor of HMOs and does not do anywhere near enough for the hospitals. Only about 15 percent of the Medicare enrollees are in HMOs, but the HMOs get 40 percent of the money in this bill. That, too, Mr. Speaker, may be a deal breaker.
Finally, Mr. Speaker, the sixth provision overturns Oregon's assisted suicide law.
In short, Mr. Speaker, this is a very important bill with very far-reaching consequences that has not even had the benefit of proper legislative consideration. Like so many other bills this session, it will help rich people instead of helping the working American families.
I urge my colleagues to oppose the previous question so that we can offer a Democrat alternative.
Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. LINDER. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Speaker, I am just rising out of confusion as to whether the gentleman from Massachusetts (Mr. MOAKLEY) states that raising IRA limits to $5,000 is a tax cut for the rich. Does increasing contribution limits for 401(k) plans for regular workers, is that a tax cut for the rich? How about increasing the portability of retirement plans so people can move from one job to another? Is that just for the rich?
If we simplify the pension system to encourage small businesses to offer their employees pension plans, is that
[Page: H11211] GPO's PDF
Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. MOAKLEY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Oregon (Mr. DEFAZIO).
Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time.
Mr. Speaker, this is a pretty sad day in the House of Representatives. Yes, as the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. LINDER) just stood up a moment ago and mentioned, there are a couple of provisions in this bill that actually before today have seen the light of day, have gone through the legislative process, have been voted on by this House, such as the pension reform provisions, which I supported. But one cannot mix those up with a number of other things that have never ever gone through committee, never been voted on, never been published.
Sometime between midnight and 7 a.m., behind closed doors, a few Republican leaders cobbled together a year-end tax bill designed to get a veto from the President so they can say, ``Look what we would have done if only Bush, Jr., was in the White House. Look what we will do next year. We will give the HMOs all the money, lock, stock and barrel. We will sell out the patients. No Patients' Bill of Rights. No quality controls. No cost controls. But billions more for the HMO plans, a blank check.'' That is in this bill.
There are other outrageous provisions, but I have got to focus on one that is extraordinarily outrageous. Twice, two times, two times the people of Oregon have gone to the ballot box, once by initiative and once by referral from a Republican legislature, to uphold the principle of assisted suicide, death with compassion for people with terminal illness.
Now, if the right wingers around here are offended by that, every other day of the week, they are for States' rights. But guess what? When a State does something they do not like, they are not for States' rights anymore.
They passed the bill in the House to overturn this, but we got more than a third of the votes. We could uphold the veto by the President. They could not even get the bill up in the Senate. They could not get it through the regular legislative process.
And sometime between midnight and 7 a.m., at the behest of a few very powerful right-wing Members of the majority, this legislation overturning the will of the people of the State of Oregon was inserted into this miscellaneous tax bill. This is an outrageous abuse of legislative power.
Mr. LINDER. Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. WELLER), a member of the Committee on Ways and Means.
(Mr. WELLER asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)
Mr. WELLER. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong support, not only of this rule, but of this legislation. This afternoon, we are going to vote on a pretty modest package of tax relief as well as a very generous contribution of additional funding for reimbursements for Medicare. That is what this legislation contains.
So the most important provisions are provisions such as those which help working people, working families where we allow people to set aside more for retirement, more for their savings, by increasing what one contributes to their IRA from $2,000 to $5,000, if one has a 401(k), increasing it from its current level from $10,000 to $15,000, tax savings to help one save for the future.
I also note that we have special provisions which will benefit working moms. I think of my sister Pat, who does not want everybody to know, but she is over 50. She has taken a few years out of the workforce. Now she is back in the workforce, a little extra income. She can make up her missed contributions to her IRA and 401(k) she was not able to make when she was at home with the kids. That is a good provision to help working moms and working people.
I also want to point out this legislation helps the entrepreneurs, the self-employed. A lot of people have talked about it. This legislation does it. We give 100 percent deductibility for the self-employed for their health insurances. Corporations have gotten it for years. The self-employed only get 60 percent. It is time we give them 100 percent.
[Time: 11:45]
I also want to point out another large group of working folks that benefit. We repeal the section 415 limits that have penalized 10 million building trade union members, building tradesmen and people who have their pensions limited unfairly because of section 415. I think of Larry Kohr from La Salle County, Illinois, a retired laborer who currently gets about $16,000 a year. He will receive almost $30,000, what he should be receiving for his pension, thanks to this legislation. That is good for working folks.
As we work to revitalize our blighted communities, I am proud to say that we expand the low-income housing tax credit, a key initiative that Ronald Reagan signed into law that enlists the private sector to, of course, create affordable housing for working poor and low-income families. As a result of this, we will probably see another 30,000 units of affordable housing provided every year as a result of the increase from the low-income housing tax credit.
Something else that is important in the Chicago area. We have about 2,000 brownfields. These are old industrial sites. Every community has one, but we have about 2,000 in the Chicago region. Of course, because of the financial costs of the environmental cleanup, private investors are hesitant to buy that old industrial park on the side of town, so that old industrial park just sits there and blights the community. We expand the current brownfields tax incentive, which means that every community in America, whether a middle-class community, a suburban community, a rural community, or the big cities, if they have a brownfield, a private investor can fully deduct, 100 percent, the environmental cleanup costs. That will help the communities, and it is good for the environment.
THIS SEARCH THIS DOCUMENT THIS CR ISSUE GO TO
Next Hit Forward Next Document New CR Search
Prev Hit Back Prev Document HomePage
Hit List Best Sections Daily Digest Help
Doc Contents