Conservation Easement Incentive Act of 2015

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to House Resolution 101,

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members may have 5 legislative days in which to revise and extend their remarks on H.R. 644, the Fighting Hunger Incentive Act of 2015.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Here is what we are trying to accomplish with this legislation today: we are trying to provide some more certainty.

Small businesses, they have to be able to plan for the future. Charities who are serving those in need, they also have to plan for the future. Families need to know whether there is going to be help for them at the local food bank. A lot of them look to the Tax Code, ironically, when planning for the future. They need a tax code that is easy to understand. But that is not the Tax Code that we have today. Whether we make the Tax Code more complicated--well, if we do that, we are

making their lives more unpredictable. That is a disservice to the people we are trying to serve.

What would really help would be to fix our broken tax system. And ultimately, our goal is to get to a tax code that is simpler, that is flatter, that is fairer for everybody. But we have still got work to do on that front, and life doesn't wait for Washington. In fact, Washington has a really bad habit of letting really important provisions expire, only to renew them retroactively. This has got to stop, and we are trying to fix this.

So this bill would make several of these provisions permanent. Number one, it would encourage charitable giving. Number two, it would help people contribute to charities from their IRAs, Individual Retirement Accounts, tax-free. Number three, it would let people deduct food bank donations from their taxes, and it would make other changes that make giving less expensive.

The quick to the short, Mr. Speaker, is these are provisions in the Code that we know--because it has been demonstrated--make a big difference.

It is so important that we have a vibrant civil society, that space that stands between ourselves and our government, which is where we live and we lead our lives, that it is vibrant and that that space is there to help people in need. Private charity is the glue that keeps our communities together.

In so many instances, private charities thrive on the good will and the donations and the generosity of other people, of businesses, and those businesses are affected by the Tax Code. What we have to do is provide certainty to those businesses who want to be generous and to those people who want to be generous, but to these charities who need some predictability, so they can plan their charitable endeavors.

Mr. Speaker, knowing that this is a bipartisan notion, knowing that the good work that is done by these groups is absolutely essential to healing people in our communities, to getting people on to lives of self-sufficiency, getting them to where they want to be in life, the least we can do is provide some certainty so more of this can happen.

Last year, Mr. Speaker, we waited until the end of the year to extend these provisions retroactive to the first of the year but only for that year--oh, and by the way, last year, we waited until December 11 to tell all of these charities, these donors to charities, Okay. Now, here is the benefit for the past year, but guess what, it already expired the beginning of this year.

I know that it sounds kind of complicated. The point is this is no way to run a railroad. We need to provide families with certainty. We need to provide charities with certainty. That is what this bill does.

The part that we are going to have a debate here, Mr. Speaker, is nobody seems to have a problem when we do this 1 year at a time. Nobody seems to have a problem suggesting that we ``pay for it'' which is, in my opinion, another way of saying raise taxes on other people just to keep them the same when we do it 1 year at a time, but when we say, Let's make this thing permanent, this thing that we do once every year that everybody is fine with, instead of doing it once every year and sometimes retroactively, let's just do it permanently so people in families and businesses can plan, then all of a sudden, there is a big problem.

I personally don't understand that. It makes no sense because who we are serving is not Washington, who we are serving are the people who are trying to survive, are the people who are the beneficiaries of these charities or the charities who are doing the good works. That is why we are bringing this legislation to the floor. I am very excited to be a part of this.

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank all the Members on both sides of the aisle for their hard work in this area, and with that, I reserve the balance of my time.

At this time, I would like to yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Kelly), the distinguished member from the Ways and Means Committee.

I yield the gentleman an additional 30 seconds.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 1 minute to say I truly, sincerely want to say this.

I very much respect the majority whip. We have had a great relationship over the years. I very much respect the gentleman. He is a class act legislator. I look forward to his support of our coming work from the committee if he wants to be part of tax reform.

I yield to the gentleman.

That was the longest magic minute I think I have seen.

Mr. Speaker, I just want to keep on my time.

Let me ask about the time allotment, by the way. Who is where.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 2 minutes.

Mr. Speaker, normally, I don't try to get into these baseline issues because it is kind of arcane budget issues. But here is where I think there is an inconsistency or a problem, and so people listening to this debate, there is a lot of confusion here.

If we were talking about a spending bill--let's just say the highway trust fund or TANF, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families--and it expired and we said, well, let's just extend this bill, this law, and the spending in it at its current levels for another 5, 6 years, we wouldn't have to ``pay'' for that. It wouldn't cost anything. It is already in the baseline. So if we were basically talking about a spending bill here, none of these kinds of criticisms would hold merit, would be usable.

So here we are talking about taxes, and so I think people are getting the impression from this debate that we are talking about a tax cut here, that we are talking about doing something to businesses or individuals and cutting their taxes. These are laws that are already on the books. Charities, that is what we are talking about here in this particular bill. All we are saying is don't raise their taxes. That is what we are saying here.

The choice before us is fairly obvious. Either we raise taxes on small businesses and individuals with respect to charitable giving, or we keep them where they are today and just go raise taxes on somebody else, or we acknowledge reality for what it is: they have these benefits, they have had these benefits, we all agree they ought to keep these benefits, and every year we renew these benefits.

I yield myself an additional 30 seconds.

But we do it in such an awful way. We wait until the end of the year, then we do it retroactively or we do it 1 year. Nobody knows what is going on. Nobody can predict the Tax Code. Nobody can make decisions. As a result, these charities, these families, these small businesses suffer. That is what we are trying to fix here.

With that, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Schock), a distinguished member of the Ways and Means Committee.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 10 seconds to say: I wonder what the reaction would be if we chose to change the way that the spending baseline is treated, such that, if any program in its authorization expired, then it would expire on the baseline, and you would have to offset the spending for renewing any program. I would be curious to see what the reaction would be for that.

I yield 3\1/2\ minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Paulsen), a member of the Ways and Means Committee.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds.

I want to say to the gentlewoman, the minority leader, that I appreciate the tone and the temperament of her remarks. I thought that was well done.

I disagree with the basic premise on baseline. I won't get into the details. I talked about that a little bit before.

So I have some differences of opinion on the facts as she laid them out. I see it quite differently. But I thought that was a good tone and temperament that speaks well to the need for tax reform that is comprehensive. We believe that this helps move us in the right direction toward tax reform.

I won't go to the baseline issues again, only to say I think this is a positive step in the direction toward comprehensive tax reform, which clearly the gentlewoman--meaning both parties--agree is something that we have to tackle.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Roskam), a member of the Ways and Means Committee.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished member from New York (Mr. Reed), a member of the Ways and Means Committee.

Mr. Speaker, at this time, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from California (Mr. McCarthy), the distinguished House majority leader.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 1 minute to the distinguished gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Emmer).

I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Knight).

At this time, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from North Dakota (Mr. Cramer).

Mr. Speaker, at this time, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. Costello).

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time to close.

I guess I will just try to summarize this debate in a couple of ways. What I am hearing is, to paraphrase: We like this policy. We think there is a need. We just want to raise taxes.

Let me put it a different way. If there was a popular spending measure that came here to the floor that extended the same policy from last year to this year because it was expiring, I don't think we would be hearing these concerns.

In fact, with Trade Adjustment Assistance, something that is very popular among this committee and the Members on the other side of the aisle, that is exactly what happened in December. The law expired. A straight extension of the law, of spending, continued. It didn't cost anything. Why? Because that is how the baseline treats spending.

I didn't hear all the hues and cries about deficits when we extended the Trade Adjustment Assistance law, that spending program. So we hear all of these cries about it.

Actually, let me take that back. We don't hear all these hues and cries about the deficits when we extend these tax provisions for 2 years. We don't hear these concerns when we extend current law tax provisions for 1 year. And we don't hear these concerns about deficits when we retroactively extend it from last year, going forward. We only hear these concerns when we are giving people the certainty.

So the real actual question before us is: Do we have to raise taxes on other hardworking Americans just so that we can keep them where they are for everybody else? Do we take money away from charities and people giving donations or raise taxes on other hardworking Americans? Or, just like Trade Adjustment Assistance was extended this last year, do we treat these important provisions the same, which is: they are in the Code; they have been in the Code; we want them in the Code; we agree they should be in the Code--let's keep them in the Code. That is the decision here.

So the newfound concern about deficits, I find, is really more of a thinly veiled attempt to raise taxes. I think what this baseline argument is really all about is: Do we just want to have a Tax Code that raises more and more and more taxes? Do we want to put ourselves in this position of just always raising taxes? Or do we want to give taxpayers a break? We are not even saying give them a break. We are saying, just don't raise their taxes; just keep them where they are.

So this isn't costing anything, in that we are not lowering someone's taxes. We are just keeping their taxes where they are, and we are preventing them from going up. So let's just make it really clear.

I guess the new definition of preventing tax increases from hitting hardworking Americans is now a big tax cut. That is basically what we are hearing here.

We don't buy that logic. We don't want to raise people's taxes. We want to reform the Tax Code. And we want these kinds of provisions that are very important, that we know will stay in the Tax Code even with tax reform. We want people to know that they are there so they can plan accordingly.

We are doing 179 tomorrow. We want farmers to be able to buy tractors before December 11 in the year. We want people to make decisions to donate food to charities. Maybe you are doing well in retirement and you have got a little bit of money out of your Individual Retirement Account and you would like to donate it to a charity, we think you ought to be able to do that. We want foundations to be able to make donations for the greater good in their communities. Those are the things we are getting here and, more importantly, we are giving them the certainty they need to make long-term plans so they can do more of it. That is why we should pass this bill. That is why I think everybody should vote for this bill. That is why I think Democrats and Republicans should vote for this bill.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve a point of order.

I withdraw my reservation of a point of order.

Mr. Speaker, I claim the time in opposition to the gentleman's motion.

Mr. Speaker, I will be very brief. My friend got a little animated.

Mr. Speaker, there was a lot there. I will just say this. Here is the question before us: Do we want to give businesses and charities certainty or not? If we would pass this motion to recommit and it went into law, then we will be right back here at the end of the year with the same old problem. We will be right back here. We will be right back here in the same old problem.

They are saying, Let's just do 1 year. Let's just say it takes a few months to pass through the Senate and all of this, then we are back here at the end of the year saying, Oh, my gosh, all these charities are going to be in jeopardy in January.

Let's get off this merry-go-round, Mr. Speaker. It is ridiculous. We all know this is good policy. We all know this is the right thing to do, and we all know that businesses and charities need the kind of certainty that we are providing, and most of us believe that not raising taxes is not the same as cutting taxes.

With that, Mr. Speaker, I urge a ``no'' vote, and I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I shall consume.

Mr. Speaker, the issues here are not the merits. That isn't the issue. The issue is whether we proceed this way. Proceeding this way is the opposite of bipartisanship--its very opposite. The chairman has said he wants to find common ground on common aspects.

What this does is essentially pull terrain out from under common ground. It is the opposite of a search for common ground. The President has said he will veto. We have the messages right here once again. It is the opposite of bipartisanship.

It is also, if I might say, the opposite of certainty for taxpayers. We went through this last year. These bills will not become law, period. If they were to pass the House and the Senate, they would be vetoed. That happened last year. It did not become law. It will not become law this year.

These provisions will be continued if we don't pass tax reform. Mr. Chairman, you control the schedule. If you don't want to wait until December, do it earlier if tax reform doesn't become a reality.

That is another problem with this bill and these bills. They are the opposite of tax reform. You don't do tax reform in a piecemeal fashion. Dave Camp, to his credit, understood that, so he came up with a comprehensive package.

In the Senate, Republicans understand this. Senator Blunt said last week:

As long as the Finance Committee feels there is an

opportunity for overall tax reform, I think you are going to

not see a quick response to individual bills coming over.

What could be clearer? What could be clearer?

This is also the opposite of fiscal responsibility.

You have here three opposites--really four, and four opposites make a big minus.

Fourteen billion is the cost of this bill and 79 billion, the next bill--that is 93. We marked up just a few hours ago in Ways and Means two more bills, one 42 billion and another one 177 billion--that is 219. And you add up those, over $310 billion in terms of adding to the deficit.

There has been some talk about helping the middle class. Action is the opposite of platitudes. Where is the action on the child tax credit? Where is the action on the EITC also affecting working and middle class families? Where is the action on the work opportunity tax credit? Where is the action on the minimum wage? The answer is we are now several months into this session.

A reporter said to me, What is bill number one?

I said, I have no idea.

How about other bills that really address the needs of the middle class of this country?

As expressed in Ways and Means, so many of us are very opposed to what is really a counterproductive path here. The merits, again, are not the basic issue.

The basic issue, do we want to fly in the face of bipartisanship, fly in the face of certainty for taxpayers, fly in the face of tax reform, and fly in the face of fiscal responsibility? We should not be doing that. We should not be doing that.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

It is now my pleasure to yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer), our distinguished whip, who is going to supply, if the gentleman will wait here, for a very clear answer.

I yield an additional 2 minutes to the gentleman from Maryland.

I yield an additional 1 minute to the gentleman.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 1 minute.

The answer to the gentleman is you pay for certainty. If you make something permanent, you should pay for it. And that is essentially what our chairman did when he chaired the Budget Committee. His budget never assumed these provisions were permanently in the baseline or he would never have

been able to say he balanced the budget in 10 years. That is the reality.

If you want to add hundreds of billions of dollars to the budget, you have got to face up to paying for them; otherwise, you squeeze out other necessary programs.

Mr. Speaker, it is now a pleasure to yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Doggett), a member of our committee, a very active member.

I yield the gentleman an additional minute.

Mr. Speaker, it is now my real pleasure to yield 1 minute to the gentlewoman from California, Nancy Pelosi, our distinguished leader.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 30 seconds.

Essentially, what the gentleman from Illinois says is: Well, let's do tax reform by picking and choosing a piece or a few at a time.

That is the opposite of tax reform. He described it. That is the difference.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Thompson), a very distinguished member of our committee.

I yield the gentleman an additional 1 minute.

Mr. Speaker, if could I ask how much time we have remaining.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from California (Mr. Becerra), another distinguished member of our committee, the chairman of our Caucus.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 1 minute.

I think the majority leader is leaving the floor, but I want him to hear me. I am an original if not the original sponsor of the provision regarding food donation. I have a son and daughter-in-law who are working on this very issue.

The issue is this: the majority leader helped lead an effort to cut food stamps by $40 billion. The argument was we could not afford it. Now, they come forth here with a provision that they don't want to pay for, added to other provisions that will cost $200 billion, $300 billion, going to $700 billion or $800 billion.

That puts a bad name on the notion of commitment. Commitment needs to have some consistency.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Danny K. Davis).

I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Van Hollen), our ranking member on the Committee on the Budget so dedicated to these issues. If he needs more time, he should just ask.

I yield the gentleman an additional 2 minutes.

I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from New York (Mr. Crowley), another member of our committee.

Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.

We have heard a lot of discussion about many of these programs, maybe most of all about food programs. But really, let's look at it beyond the rhetoric. Essentially when it comes to food programs, what the Republicans are doing is giving with one hand while they take with another. And there is much more that they take than they would give.

The food provision here comes to $2.2 billion. They have chopped $40 billion from food stamps; that is 20 times more. As the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Van Hollen) pointed out, when you add in WIC and other programs, they have cut way over $100 billion. And they say they had to do that, in part, because they could not afford it.

So they come forth with bills that are going to add to the deficit, and that shows what this is all about, because they pass these bills adding to the deficit, and then they come back and they say, Sorry, when it comes to other needed programs, we don't have the money.

Indeed, not only do they give with one hand and take with another, and much more, but they give an empty hand, an empty hand like this-- nothing in it--for the Child Tax Credit, for the Work Opportunity Tax Credit, for the New Markets provision that really matters, for the EITC. And then they say, Well, we can't afford it, yet they won't close the tax loopholes. It is so inconsistent.

I think in terms of the impact on human beings, it is not only inadequate but it is impersonal.

So we come here fortified. We are determined to do the right thing when it comes to tax reform. We are going to do the right thing when it comes to other important issues, including fiscal responsibility. And we are going to make sure that there are the funds available for needed programs because we have paid for things.

I strongly urge a ``no'' vote. That really is standing up for the right thing

when it comes to bipartisanship, to tax reform, and to fiscal responsibility.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.

I thank the gentleman for yielding and for his leadership on helping to have a budget that produces growth to reduce the deficit.

Mr. Speaker, today, we are talking about issues on which we are very much in agreement in terms of the policy toward charitable giving. In fact, some of this legislation has been introduced by Mr. Levin and Mr. Thompson on the Ways and Means Committee, in fact, in offering an amendment in Rules last night, which was rejected by the Rules Committee, to go forward in a way that was fiscally sound and was paid for.

Here is the problem that we have. We all want to have comprehensive tax reform, where we can close loopholes and we can lower the tax rate and we can have transparency in our Tax Code. In order to go to the table to do that--and I know there is bipartisan interest in doing so-- we should go to the table with as much freedom as possible and not constrained by taking rifle shots on the floor of the House for certain pieces of the Tax Code. The whole package that the Republicans are putting forth is about $800 billion. That is a lot of money.

It is important for people to know that, in our budget every year, we have a part of the budget that is called tax expenditures. They are well over $1 trillion. Some of them are worthy, and we want to protect them--certainly, charitable deductions fall in that category--but many of them are not. Many of those tax expenditures, which means giving a tax break whether it is special interest loopholes in the Tax Code to special interests, do not create growth. They increase the deficit, and they are just like spending. They are called expenditures because they are giving a tax break to certain special interests.

Okay. How does that fit in here?

We want to go to the table--put everything on the table--and subject it to agnostic scrutiny to say: What works for growth? What is fair about transparency? How do we proceed in a way that lowers the corporate rate? increases the revenue to the budget? that has fairness, simplicity, and transparency?

What the Republicans are proposing this week is totally in opposition to our being able to do that effectively. What they are saying is let us take $800 billion--permanently, unpaid for--out of the mix, and then we have less to negotiate on in terms of what we can do on the other side of the budget, which are investments into the future.

I have always said--and I think that most economists would agree-- that nothing brings more money to the Treasury or reduces the deficit more than investments in education--early childhood education, K-12, higher ed, postgraduate--lifelong learning. That is about growth. That is about bigger paychecks, confidence to spend, demand injected into the economy, jobs created, revenue produced. It is all part of how we can go forward with a budget for the future that creates growth and reduces the deficit.

So we have this obstacle, which sounds very good. How do you vote against these provisions, which are good provisions, about nonprofits and conservation and all of these other things? We agree--as I say, our colleagues have introduced them--but then you say that they are permanently unpaid for. Again, mixing some of the good with the not so good is like a Trojan horse moving in. It looks good, but wait a minute. There is a lot in the gut of that horse that is not good for growth or for reducing the deficit.

All we are saying to everyone today is we can come to agreement on some of the principles about tax deductions for charitable organizations. It is curious to hear our colleagues talk so movingly about providing food for hungry people when very few of them want to vote for food stamps, but that is a whole other issue. It just shows some inconsistency in all of this.

Just remember this one thing: if we want to have comprehensive tax reform--if we want to reduce the deficit, if we want to have balance in terms of investments plus how we produce revenue--we have to do it in a comprehensive way. That is what a budget is about. What we are doing today is to throw up, to just stack the deck against any investments in growth, because we have already taken $800 billion off the table if we go down this path.

What we are doing today is to say other tax reforms that we want to make for fairness are already in jeopardy because of some of what is in this. As I say, some are positive and some are not. Let's be discerning in how we make the judgment. You can't be discerning by saying: I am going to vote for permanent, unpaid-for tax expenditures--which, as I say, have a blend of positive and negative in them, but it is hard to make a distinction without seeing the whole, big picture of it.

I urge my colleagues to say: While I support some of what is good in all of this, I do not support permanently taking it off the table for consideration and not paying for it at this time.

In order to talk this through and have a clear instead of this drive- by approach to tax policy--an antideficit exploding spree that our Republican colleagues are on while they profess to be deficit hawks-- and while we are working this out and having a discussion about this, we, in our motion to recommit, will have a 1-year extension of the provision that we are talking about here so that, okay, in the course of this time, we will go forward with a tax extender for 1 year.

Hopefully, in that time, under the leadership of the Budget chair, who is also from the Ways and Means Committee--he understands these issues very well. In fact, his own budget would not be consistent with what he is putting on the floor today as he is the former chair of Ways and Means, now of the Budget Committee. No. It is the reverse, but it is related. They are so related because how we produce revenue is so essential to how we do our budget, and the gentleman knows that because his own budget would be inconsistent with what is on the floor today.

So I say to my colleagues: Hold on. Vote ``no'' on this. Vote ``yes'' on the motion to recommit, which gives us a year to talk this through but to do so in a way that reduces the deficit, produces growth, makes bigger paychecks from that growth to increase more revenue, and we would have these provisions go forth in a way that is fair, that is paid for, and that is part of comprehensive tax reform.

With that, again, I thank the gentleman for his exceptional leadership and the members of the Ways and Means Committee for their courage in opposing something that has popular appeal. There is a reason why. They are not bad policies. It is just that they are not paid for, and they are permanent. We should do this, but we should do it right. I urge my colleagues to vote ``no'' on the bill and ``yes'' on the motion to recommit.

I thank the gentleman for his leadership.

I thank my friend from Michigan.

Mr. Speaker, things are not always what they seem, and this is one of those cases. It is unfortunate because tax incentives for charitable giving are the kind of issues we should be handling in a bipartisan way. We should be working together in a bipartisan manner to reform our Tax Code and this as part of that.

Unfortunately, we are not doing that today, and this bill along with the series of other bills that will be coming to the floor in the days to come will add $350 billion to our deficit over the next 10 years.

Mr. Speaker, most of the bills that are coming next are permanent extensions of tax breaks to major corporations. In the process, they don't pay for any of that. They don't close a single corporate tax loophole to provide those tax breaks.

Now, Mr. Speaker, I am holding in my hand the budget that Republicans passed in this House just a year ago. Now we have the chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means--he was chairman of the Committee on the Budget, a good friend of mine. In their budget last year, they said they would not do what they are doing today. They passed a budget saying they would not have tax extenders that added to the deficit. I am reading right here from the budget that I think passed unanimously with Republican votes. It says they will only do these tax extenders if such measures would not increase the deficit for the period of fiscal years 2015 to 2024.

Here we are, less than a year later, throw their budget out the door. Why did it matter? Because last year they wanted to pretend their budget was in balance after 10 years, and they knew that if you had these tax extenders that were unpaid for, they wouldn't have a balanced budget. It wasn't balanced anyway, but no matter, that is why they did it.

Now, why does this matter beyond the fact that the Republican majority did one thing last year and is doing something different today? It matters because when you increase the deficits, our Republican colleagues are going to come right back around to us and say: You know what? The deficits are going to go up, and so we have to cut some of the investments that are supposed to help vulnerable people--the very people our Republican colleagues say they want to help today. They are going to say: Deficits are going up. We have got to cut those programs.

You know how we know that? Even before they increase the deficit like they are doing today, they were cutting those investments last year. In fact, while they are claiming to fight hunger today, here is what the budget from last year did: it would have cut the food and nutrition programs by 20 percent, $137 billion. That would have ended nutrition assistance for 3.8 million Americans.

Now, I heard one of my friends and colleagues, Mr. Roskam from Illinois, saying Democrats are opposing this.

I heard some of our colleagues saying we are opposing this on the basis of process. Really? Cutting nutrition assistance programs for 3.8 million Americans is process?

You know what else their budget did? It cut the category of spending that we use for the Women, Infants, and Children program to the point that 200,000 women, infants, and children would have been cut off of supplemental nutrition assistance under the Women, Infants, and Children program. Process? Really? I thought our colleagues were saying they wanted to fight hunger.

That budget last year, the one I am holding in my hands that passed here, you know what else it did? It did not extend tax credits for vulnerable people. It did not extend the earned income tax credit bump up. It did not extend the child tax credit. At the same time, they had a budget, and I suspect they will again this year, that cuts the top income tax rate for millionaires. That is what they do.

We can do a lot better, Mr. Speaker. That is what Democrats are saying. We can make these reforms to the Tax Code. We can make the charitable deduction permanent, but we can do it in a way that doesn't hurt other programs for hungry people. We can help hungry people through one mechanism without hurting those same people through another mechanism. That is why the President said he was going to veto this bill, not because it helps the deduction for charitable giving. This is a bill that says we are going to help some hungry people. But you know what? We are going to do something else in our budget that actually hurts those same hungry people even more, much more.

Now, I am also holding in my hand the Democratic budget that was presented last year. You know what we do? We permanently extended this charitable deduction--permanently--just like this bill. But you know what we did not do?

Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend.

So I just want to be clear. In our budget, we extended permanently this charitable deduction to fight hunger, the fighting hunger incentive. We did that.

But you know what we did not do? We did not cut the food and nutrition program, SNAP, by 20 percent. You know what we did not do? We did not cut the part of the budget that funds the Women, Infants, and Children program so that 200,000 people would not have the benefit of that.

You know what we did do? We cut a lot of the corporate tax breaks. We said we should not have a Tax Code that actually rewards American companies that move American jobs and capital overseas, so we would cut down on those. In that way, we were able to pay for them. That way, Mr. Speaker, we were able to extend the charitable deduction permanently, but we were also able to avoid cutting the Women, Infants, and Children program and avoid cutting the food and nutrition programs. That is what we are saying.

Unfortunately, the bill before us today, what they are saying is, by increasing the deficit, yes, we are going to extend this program to fight hunger; but, on the other hand, when their budget comes around next year, they are actually going to pass stuff that hurts those same people even more.

What we are saying is we don't have to help people by hurting people. We can do it all if we are willing to cut some of those corporate tax breaks, tax expenditures, spinning the Tax Code for major corporations that are put there because they have good lobbyists in Washington.

So let's do this the right way. That's the way we did it in the Democratic budget last year. That is the way we will do it in the Democratic budget again this year. Let's not help people by hurting other people or even hurting the people we are trying to help.

Mr. Speaker, I regretfully urge that we reject this bill and do this the right way.

The ranking member didn't write my speech, so I am not sure what my answer to the distinguished gentleman's comments is, but I will say this to my friend, I am not for 1 year. I may vote for 1 year, but that is not what we ought to do. It ought to be paid for if it is 1 year, 2 years, permanent. There is no free lunch.

You are in the automobile business. People come into your automobile store, and they would say, I would like to have that car for $10,000.

And you say, Now, look, I paid $20,000 for that car. I can't sell it to you for $10,000.

There is no free lunch. Unpaid tax cuts are a free lunch, a pretense that somehow it is just free, but I will tell my friend it is not free.

The chairman, who was the chairman of the Budget Committee, offered a budget which cuts food stamps $125 billion. This bill is called the Fighting Hunger Incentive Act--$125 billion cut in food stamps. I tell you my friend voted for a $40 billion cut in food stamps in the farm bill.

I am not for free lunches. I am for a lot of these tax cuts, but I am not for taking it out of the mouths of children, I am not for taking it out of NIH, and I am not for taking it out of our national security. We have got to pay for what we buy, and I vote that way.

The chairman and I were one of 18 people one time that voted against a very popular bill that had to do with Social Security. We thought it was not paid for and not fiscally responsible, and he and I were one of 18 people in this House that voted against it.

I don't have much time, but maybe we can get some more. I yield to the gentleman.

Reclaiming my time, Mr. Speaker, I used to have a magic 1 minute. I don't have that now. I would be glad to participate in debate. We have had bad policy, I tell my friend.

Terrible policy.

I don't know about you, but I am for Simpson-Bowles. The problem with Simpson-Bowles for some people is it paid for what it did, just like the Camp bill. The Camp bill made tough choices, and it was a zero-sum game in the sense that it cut taxes and it paid for them--a zero-sum game--just like you had to run your business because, if you didn't run your business that way, you would have gone bankrupt.

Now, I fought for that for a very long period of time and voted that way, as I say, one of 18 with my friend from Wisconsin, but I tell my friend, yes, we are following bad policy.

This bill, you can argue for the merits. I get that. The next bill, you can argue for the merits, and the bill after that and the bill after that and the bill after that, and you have then caused $600 billion in deficit spending that your kids and my kids will have to pay for because we are too old to be around long enough to pay for it.

So I rise against this bill not because I am against fighting hunger. Everybody ought to be against fighting hunger.

But when you talk about fighting hunger, don't cut food stamps $40 billion. Don't suggest the way we pay for this tax cut is to cut $125 billion from food stamps over the next 10 years, as the chairman did.

I disagree with that policy, and I respect the chairman.

No, I can't yield any more because I am running out of time.

Mr. Speaker, this is one of two bills that we are considering on the floor this week to make tax cuts permanent, and it is unfortunate that neither of these bills is paid for 1 year or permanently. Together, they would increase the deficit by $93 billion. Nobody is suggesting we are going to pay for that, so our kids will pay for it.

Democrats support extending many of the preferences we are talking about, but we are also deeply concerned about America's fiscal future. And I voted that way, not just talked that way.

I hear a lot of talk from my friends in the majority about the debt, but

that talk too often fails to translate into fiscally responsible policy. It didn't in 1981 when we cut taxes deeply and increased the national debt from the time I came in under Reagan 189 percent, more than any President that has been President during my term in the last 34 years.

We have seen these two tax bills before--when Republicans brought them to the floor last Congress, along with several other permanent tax cuts, which, together, would have ballooned the deficit by more than $600 billion. That is twice what we will spend on medical research at NIH and 10 times what it would cost to expand community college access.

I also hear a lot of my friends on the other side of the aisle talk about a broken tax system. I tell my friend, that system is going to remain broken. That system is going to remain broken unless we do what Camp did.

Did I agree with everything that Camp did? No. But I respected him for putting together a package of tax reform that gives what Mr. Ryan says we need, and I agree with him--certainty. People need to know. These ought to all be permanent. The R&D tax credit ought to be permanent so people can plan.

America's businesses and families deserve the certainty that comes from tax reform, not partisan piecemeal reform bills that undermine--undermine--tax reform. That is what Roy Blunt was talking about.

Roy Blunt has already been quoted, so I won't repeat the quote. But what he said is, as long as the Finance Committee feels there is an opportunity for overall tax reform, I think you are not going to see a quick response to individual bills coming over.

That is why this is bad policy; because you are not going to get from here to there unless you have a comprehensive bill that makes the tough tradeoffs and summons the courage of this Congress to pass meaningful, permanent, paid-for tax certainty for our citizens.

Will the gentleman yield?

No, I have done longer when I had the minute, believe me.

I want to tell the gentleman, in all sincerity, I look forward to being able to support a bill that is comprehensive, paid for, and gives our citizens and individual taxpayers the certainty they need to have the confidence they need to grow our economy.

I thank the gentleman for yielding.