American Innovation and R&D Competitiveness Act of 2023

Mr. Speaker, I rise to commend a new initiative by the business community and law enforcement in Placer County spearheaded by the district attorney's office called the Placer County Retail Theft Initiative.

You can see here a printout of window signs that businesses in Placer County can now display. It says: ``This business is protected by Placer County's Retail Theft Initiative. Warning, Placer County is invested in holding those who steal from our residents and businesses accountable to the greatest extent the State law allows.''

Now, the reason this is necessary is that there has been an epidemic of retail theft in California, owing to very misguided changes to the State's criminal laws, as well as very misguided choices by certain jurisdictions to defund police and to have prosecutors who refuse to enforce the law.

What Placer County, a county in my district, is doing is saying that we are not one of those jurisdictions. We are a pro-public safety county and, what's more, even though the State's criminal laws around retail theft are very weak, the county is using the full authority that exists in those laws, maximizing the accountability that can be brought to bear on those who choose to steal.

Therefore, these signs have been distributed. You can actually get them from the district attorney's office. My office has some, as well, if you are a business and would like to display one in your window. It serves as a real deterrent.

What is making this possible is: the Placer County Board of Supervisors has voted to accept a $2 million grant for the Placer County District Attorney's Office new retail theft vertical prosecution team. With these grant funds, the DA's office will add a full-time deputy district attorney, a district attorney investigator, and a crime analyst to work on the investigation and prosecution of retail theft crimes.

The vertical prosecution structure provided by the grant allows for cases to be handled by the same investigator and prosecutor from case filing through adjudication.

You can see here the broad coalition that is behind this initiative. It is not just the DA's office. It is the sheriff's office; it is the Roseville Police Department; it is the Rocklin Police Department; the Auburn Police Department; the Lincoln Police Department; Colfax, as well as the business community of the Roseville area chamber.

You have the Lincoln chamber, you have the Rocklin area chamber, you have the Auburn chamber, the Foresthill chamber, Colfax chamber, Loomis Basin chamber, an entire coalition that has come together in order to make this a very clear deterrent.

Again, this is an actual sign that businesses can have in their window so that thieves who are walking by will see that, if they choose to prey upon this business, if they choose to steal, then that crime is going to be reported, and they are going to be held accountable to the full extent that the law allows.

In this way, I believe Placer County is setting a model for jurisdictions across California. In fact, this isn't the first time that Placer has done this. Placer County was also the first county in the State of California to obtain a murder conviction for fentanyl.

Again, the State's laws, similar to retail theft, on fentanyl are not as strong as they should be. The legislature and Governor have refused to act to pass stronger laws, but the district attorney's office has managed to use the authority within existing law to bring the full measure of accountability on those who prey on the public.

As Placer County District Attorney Morgan Gire said: ``Placer County is known as a problem solver on key issues affecting our State. Our county's collaborative and innovative approach to statewide problems, coupled with our ability to address those problems proactively, makes Placer County a leader in addressing challenges affecting our quality of life. This retail theft initiative shows that we are united and dedicated to fighting retail theft in our region.''

It is one reason, by the way, why folks want to come to our county. While the population of California has been steadily declining, it has actually been increasing in our county, and a major reason is the dedication of those who are in public safety roles and support that exists in our community for supporting law enforcement as a key facet of maintaining our quality of life.

Now, of course, you can look at other parts of the State, like San Francisco, where you are seeing precisely the opposite, where there is this downward spiral of retailers continuing to close. It is like a new business every day seems to shut down. The city itself is losing population faster than any major city in U.S. history.

Ultimately, the State of California needs to reform its broken criminal justice system. Initiatives like Prop 47 have dramatically reduced the consequences that are available for retail theft, and for open drug use. Other policies like Prop 57, Realignment, and many more have weakened our ability to hold offenders accountable.

What Placer County has shown is that, even with being dealt a bad hand by the State, it is still possible for the community to come together to insist on accountability, and I think that what they are doing is a great model. I would certainly encourage any businesses within Placer who are seeing this to pick up one of these signs in order to protect your establishment.

Independent Contractor Rule

Mr. Speaker, the Biden administration's Department of Labor has announced a new independent contractor rule that amounts to one of the most potentially harmful economic policies that has come out of this administration or any administration in recent history. It is estimated that this new rule, which restricts significantly the ability to be an independent contractor, to work as a freelancer, to be your own boss, could cost upwards of 3.2 to 3.6 million full and part-time jobs.

Also, here is the thing. This is not a matter of speculation. Sometimes, when you have a proposed policy, you can do an economic analysis and try to forecast what the effects might be. However, in this case, we know exactly what the effects are going to be, because we have already seen them play out in California.

This new independent contractor rule is based upon California's infamous AB5 law, which was signed by Governor Gavin Newsom in 2019.

The effects of that law have been absolutely devastating. In fact, a study out of George Mason University just a few weeks ago found that the law, in and of itself, has reduced self-employment in California by over 10 percent and has reduced overall employment by over 4 percent. That is potentially hundreds of thousands of jobs that have been lost in California because of this one law. That is what really makes this law uniquely devastating.

California has a lot of very harmful labor and economic policies, and we are seeing a lot from this administration, as well. Oftentimes, as a worker, as an entrepreneur, as a small business owner, there is a death-by-a-million-cuts effect where the costs imposed on your enterprise just add up to the point that things don't pencil out and you have to close down shop, lay people off, or move out of the State.

Well, AB5 was different in that it was one particular law that, by itself, cost many, many people their livelihoods, completely upended their whole career with a stroke of a pen. We saw this effect immediately after AB5 passed in 2019.

Before it had even taken effect, we heard countless stories of people who all of a sudden had no ability to earn a living. The careers that they had built over years, over decades, were snatched from them, were taken away with the effect of this one single law.

Therefore, after the law went into effect, in a matter of weeks, we compiled a whole book full of stories, AB5 stories, and many, many more have been added since. As this new rule is about to take effect, I am planning to share some of those stories with the American public so that folks who are outside California know what is in store if and when this new Biden administration labor rule takes effect.

For today's story, this is from John, who is a guest orchestral conductor. Very shortly after AB5 took effect, he said: I depend on my contractor status to maintain sustainable fees while not fleecing orchestras. He says: Because of this bill, AB5, I just lost my first scheduled job with an orchestra. That is $9,000 that would have put a dent in my student loans or helped pay my insurance, or paid for food and shelter is now gone, all because of AB5.

There are countless other stories that I will be sharing from this floor.

If you are an independent contractor in California who lost your livelihood because of AB5, please feel free to reach out and share your story with my office so that I can share it with folks across the country and certainly folks here in this House of Representatives as a warning about what the effects of this legislation are going to be.

Now, we are fighting against this policy, this new independent contractor rule, which will destroy millions of livelihoods. We are fighting against it in every way that we can, using every tool available.

First, I am introducing legislation under the Congressional Review Act to nullify the new rule. This is a fast-track procedure where Congress can override an executive agency.

Second, I have secured language in the Labor Appropriations bill providing that no funds may be spent to enforce the rule. This would effectively render it a dead letter.

Third, I have joined with Representative Elise Stefanik to author the Modern Worker Empowerment Act, which creates a clear legal standard to protect independent workers.

Fourth, I have endorsed the Department of Labor Succession Act, which has already passed through committee, which is going to stop Acting Secretary Julie Su from remaining in that position indefinitely.

Julie Su is Biden's nominee to be Secretary of Labor. She was rejected by the Senate. Her nomination was returned after almost a year last year in the face of bipartisan opposition, yet President Biden has insisted on keeping her at the helm of the Labor Department as an unconfirmed Secretary.

Why is that? Because Julie Su was the architect of AB5 itself. She was Gavin Newsom's Secretary of Labor in California and was the chief enforcer of AB5. That is why, for anyone who questions that the new national policy is based on AB5, why in the world would they promote, of all people, the architect and lead enforcer of AB5 into this new role, if not to do the exact same thing for the whole country?

Fifth, as chair of the House Subcommittee on Workforce Protections, I will continue to conduct rigorous oversight of the Department of Labor, and we will do everything possible to protect American workers against this independent contractor rule and other administration overreaching policies.

Finally, it is worth mentioning that there are now two different lawsuits, as we anticipated, challenging the independent contractor rule.

One is reviving a previous challenge to a previous version of this rule on procedural grounds.

The second, which was recently filed by a group called Fight for Freelancers that has partnered with Pacific Legal Foundation, is challenging the rule itself on a few grounds--on the ground that it doesn't comply with the statutory authority that has been granted to the agency, that it violates a statute that prohibits arbitrary rulemaking by an agency, and, finally, it is a constitutional challenge saying that the vagueness of the law essentially amounts to a violation of due process.

That is all to say that we have hope of stopping this destructive policy from

taking effect, and I will continue to share the stories of those who have already been affected in California in hopes that we can save millions of American workers the same fate.

Homelessness Crisis in California

Mr. Speaker, we recently received some good news, as the United States Supreme Court has decided to hear a case called City of Grants Pass v. Johnson, which could mark a turning point for the homelessness crisis in California.

Just to provide some context, let's consider the full breadth of that crisis.

It has been 20 years since Governor Newsom rolled out his plan--he was then the mayor of San Francisco at the time--to end homelessness in San Francisco within a decade. It has now been 20 years since he announced that, and this anniversary happened to coincide with the Department of Housing and Urban Development's annual homelessness report to Congress.

Among the findings of the HUD report are that California has the highest homelessness rate of any State. California has had a 30.5 percent increase in homelessness from 2007 to 2023. That is the highest increase of any State.

California accounts for 28 percent of America's homeless and about 50 percent--that is half--of the Nation's unsheltered homeless. San Francisco, for its part, has the second highest percent of unsheltered homeless youth and unsheltered veterans of any city in the country.

So there are a lot of reasons for these appalling statistics and the tragic realities that they represent. It is political failure where we have had policies dealing with crime, for example, that have released many people from prisons too early and don't have appropriate consequences for criminal activity. There is our State's soaring cost of living that is a result of many different political failures. There is the inadequacy of our State's approach to mental health and substance abuse. Then there is the complete wastefulness and lack of accountability when it comes to the billions and billions and billions of dollars that are being spent at the State and local level to address the homelessness crisis.

In fact, as the State has continued to spend more and more--many, many times more--than it has ever spent, the homelessness problem has only continued to get worse, and, there is, in fact, an audit coming in California that is finally going to look at homelessness spending.

Nonetheless, on top of all of these political and policy failures, there have been significant judicial impediments to dealing with the homelessness crisis; that is, a series of decisions by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals beginning with the Boise case and its progeny that have made it difficult, if not impossible, to enforce anti-camping ordinances and to otherwise clear out homelessness encampments from public spaces.

Mr. Speaker, if you talk to city leaders, county leaders, and leaders of municipalities across California, they will tell you that this line of cases is the bane of their existence and that it is a significant obstacle in the way of commonsense policies for dealing with homelessness.

So the Supreme Court has now taken up this case, and I am very hopeful that the Court is going to do the right thing and that it is going to restore the proper authority to local officials to deal with homelessness in public spaces.

The initial line of cases that the Court will be examining is based on a very distorted view of the Eighth Amendment, and so I believe that the legal argument here is one that will coincide with what is best from a policy perspective. So I will be urging the Court to make the right decision here, but at the same time, if and when the Court does that, when it provides these new tools to folks at the local level, we will finally have the political accountability for our State leaders to address homelessness in the right way so that we don't another 20 years from now continue to set the standard for having the most homelessness of any State in the entire country.

Important Tax Relief

Mr. Speaker, we have some good news in the bill that has just been released that is a major tax bill here in the House of Representatives that will be moving through the House and likely coming up for a vote very soon. The good news is that several measures that I have cosponsored that provide important tax relief have made it into this tax bill.

I wanted to provide a few examples because these are significant ways in which we are now using the tax code in order to stimulate the right kinds of economic activity.

One of the measures that made it into the bill is H.R. 2673, the American Innovation and R&D Competitiveness Act. What this does is it eliminates the 5-year amortization requirement for research and experimental expenditures thereby allowing continued expensing of such expenditures in the taxable years in which they are incurred.

What this does is it enhances the competitiveness of U.S. companies particularly when it comes to competition with China and otherwise across the board.

Another provision that is very important that has found its way into this bill is H.R. 2406, the ALIGN Act. What it does is it makes permanent the expensing of certain new business equipment. This expensing allows the deduction of the full amount of an expensable item in the same taxable year instead of being depreciated under the current IRS rules. Once again, this is a very important provision for stimulating manufacturing and enhancing our competitiveness here in the United States.

A third measure which has made its way into this tax bill is H.R. 4970; that is the Protect Innocent Victims of Taxation After Fire Act. This measure which I have cosponsored excludes from gross income for income tax purposes any amount received after 2019 and before 2026 by an individual taxpayer as a qualified wildfire relief payment.

It defines such payment as compensation for expenses or losses incurred as a result of a federally declared forest or range fire disaster.

So this is just common sense and much-needed. It corrects an injustice for Californians who had suffered greatly because of our State's catastrophic wildfires and then found they were going to be taxed on the settlements and compensation that they received.

Finally, within this broader tax bill is another measure that I have cosponsored, H.R. 3238, the Affordable Housing Credit Improvement Act. Now, this does a number of things to stimulate housing production that we so direly need in the State of California.

It increases the per capita dollar amount of the affordable housing credit and its minimum ceiling amount beginning in 2023, and it extends the inflation adjustments for such amounts.

The low-income housing tax credit subsidizes the acquisition, construction, and rehabilitation of affordable rental housing for low- and moderate-income tenants. That is what we are talking about here. This measure that has now been included in the broader tax bill extends and updates it to create new housing opportunities in California and across the country.

It also increases the number of credits allocated to each State; that is, the legislation would increase the number of credits available to States by 50 percent for the next 2 years and make the temporary 12.5 percent increase secured in 2018 permanent which has already helped build more than 59,000 affordable housing units nationwide.

It also increases the number of affordable housing projects that can be built using private activity bonds. This provision would stabilize financing for workforce housing projects built using private activity bonds by decreasing the amount of private activity bonds needed to secure housing credit funding. As a result, projects will have to carry less debt and more projects will be eligible to receive funding.

Finally, this improves the housing credit program to better serve at- risk and underserved communities. This legislation would also make improvements to the program to better serve veterans, victims of domestic violence, formerly homeless students, Native-American communities, and rural Americans.

I look forward to the opportunity to support this bill and enact these provisions into law that will stimulate our economy, will stimulate housing, and

will provide the full measure of compensation for wildfire victims in our State.

Tax Relief for Fire Hardening Homes

Mr. Speaker, last week I introduced the SAFE HOME Act which provides a tax credit for folks to harden their homes against wildfires.

Right now in California we have not only experienced devastating catastrophic wildfires in recent years, but, as a result, we are now in the thick of an insurance crisis where folks' rates for fire insurance have absolutely skyrocketed. People are losing their plans left and right, insurance companies are pulling out of California, and more and more people are being kicked on to what is called the FAIR Plan, which is not a good option for a lot of folks and imposes enormous costs.

This is having ramifications for homeowners, for businesses, for folks looking to buy a home, and for folks looking to sell a home. In one of my counties it has even impeded an affordable housing project from even getting off the ground, and the situation continues to get worse and worse and worse.

We have seen State Farm and Allstate say they are now no longer issuing plans in California. Other insurance companies such as Merastar, Unitirn, and Kemper Independence have said they are not going to renew policies in 2024 for homeowners.

Unfortunately, we have not seen much, if any, meaningful action from the Governor or from the legislature in California.

So folks really, really need relief. People are having to pay thousands more than they anticipated, and a lot of people simply cannot afford it.

So I have proposed a number of policies over the last few years to try to provide individuals with relief. What the SAFE HOME Act does is it at least provides folks with some relief based upon the work that they themselves have done to try to reduce the risk of wildfire.

What is so frustrating to a lot of people is they do everything they possibly can to mitigate the risk of fire in their home, to harden their home, and to create a firebreak. Nonetheless, they don't get rewarded for it. The insurance companies don't take that into account, and they still see their rates skyrocket just like anyone else.

So what we want to do with this bill is provide some relief to those people, and at the same time, to create an incentive for more people to harden their homes so as to reduce the risk of wildfires. So, specifically, the SAFE HOME Act which I have introduced creates a 25 percent refundable tax credit for wildfire mitigation.

It includes a phaseout starting at $200,000, and it drops by 25 percent every $25,000 in income above $200,000. At $300,000 in income the credit is phased out. There is also an inflation adjustment for any year after 2024 equal to the cost-of-living adjustment.

The credit is only made available for a primary home that a Federal natural disaster declaration has been made within the preceding 10-year period with respect to a wildfire or is adjacent to an area that has had a disaster declaration, and it would sunset on December 31, 2032.

So it is a modest measure. It is not going to impose enormous costs, but it will provide real relief to folks who really need it and who are doing the right thing by trying to reduce the risks to themselves and their neighbors.

So I am hoping that this is a measure that will receive broad bipartisan support, but I recognize that it is not a comprehensive solution to this very serious problem. So I call upon my colleagues especially in California but also other States who are seeing similar issues to come together to provide a backstop, the needed policies to do whatever we can at the Federal level to stop this crisis from continuing to spiral out of control. I also call upon the State leaders in California to do their part, as well.

Finally, we need to recognize ultimately that the way to truly get the insurance crisis under control is to stop having catastrophic wildfires in California on a regular basis which, of course, come with loss of life, loss of property, and destruction of communities, as well as not to mention a tremendous amount of environmental harm.

We have seen effective forest management practices work, and we have seen ineffective forest mismanagement practices lead to tragedy.

Mr. Speaker, I will give you just an example from one fire in California which leveled the town of Grizzly Flats in my district and spread far elsewhere and almost consumed the city of South Lake Tahoe. This is the Caldor fire in El Dorado County.

The Federal Government was supposed to have done a mitigation project that could well have stopped the Caldor fire from ever spreading, but years and years and years went by and the project never got done. The fire started. It leveled Grizzly Flats. It put many, many people out of their homes.

By the way, the Biden administration has still not delivered the individual assistance that was promised to the residents of Grizzly Flats. As the fire spread and it made its way toward Tahoe, Mr. Speaker, you might remember these surreal scenes of ski slopes that are just aflame. However, it didn't end up destroying or even making a dent in the city of South Tahoe because of the absolutely heroism of the firefighters there and the first responders, but also because there had been mitigation work done in the Christmas Valley thanks to a policy change that had fairly recently been made in this Congress which provided a categorical exclusion from environmental reviews for projects in the Tahoe area. If it were not for that policy, that work likely would not have been done, and the fire could have been that much more devastating.

So I am sponsoring legislation that would build on that success story, and it would have a policy change where you could have the same expedited process for doing fire mitigation work throughout the national forest system.

Mr. Speaker, when you go and talk to folks in the Forest Service and the other groups and stakeholders and folks in government who are working to mitigate the risk of wildfire, they will all tell you this would make an enormous difference.

In order to get the fire insurance crisis under control, it is above all necessary that we do everything we possibly can to stop these tragedies from continuing to occur in California.

I am sponsoring a number of measures to do that, but we have to act with urgency because the risks will continue until we do.

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

Mr. Speaker, I ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days to revise and extend their remarks and include extraneous material on the subject of this Special Order.

Mr. Speaker, it is a new year, and the House is already busy tackling issues important to Americans. Something that should be high on our list is advancing legislation that will benefit our economy, U.S. innovators, and American workers--and that is immediate R&D expensing.

Tonight my colleagues and I want to talk about how this critical provision encourages research and development in the United States, and, in turn, helps fuel job growth and keeps manufacturing inside our borders.

Recognizing this, for nearly 70 years the tax code allowed businesses to fully deduct their R&D expenses in the same year in which they were incurred. However, since the beginning of 2022, businesses have been required to spread out, or amortize, R&D expenses over 5 years for domestic R&D or 15 years for foreign R&D.

As you can see on this graph, since amortization took place, the growth rate of R&D spending has slowed dramatically from 6.6 percent on average over the previous 6 years to less than one half of 1 percent over the last 12 months.

This slump in U.S. R&D investment is hurting the American economy at a time when rising inflation is hurting workers and holding back job creators.

As companies spend far less on R&D, the sector is down by more than 14,000 jobs. Three-quarters of research and development spending is on salaries and wages, making R&D amortization primarily a jobs issue.

On the other hand, our main competitor, China, has seen its R&D investment increase by 400 percent in just two decades. While the United States' share of global R&D investment in 2019 had dropped to 30 percent, China's share had moved up to 24 percent--in fact, up from 15 percent in 2009, a jump of nearly 10 percentage points in 10 years.

They achieved this impressive growth by implementing the deduction of 200 percent on eligible R&D investments. Without action, the United States will fall even further behind.

But we have the solution, and it is backed by Members in 43 States and from both sides of the aisle.

On tax day of this year, I reintroduced H.R. 2673, the American Innovation and R&D Competitiveness Act. This bipartisan bill corrects the R&D amortization issue and will spur homegrown research and development. And we know that where R&D occurs, jobs and economic opportunities follow.

Mr. Speaker, the American Innovation and R&D Competitive Business Act has 212 cosponsors in addition to myself and a lead Democrat. Those are nearly evenly split between Democrats and Republicans. It is the 17th most cosponsored piece of legislation in this Congress. Tonight, my colleagues are going to help me share the decisive difference it would make for workers and innovators in each of their districts.

As I wrote in an op-ed in December, the best time to address R&D amortization was at the end of 2021. The best next time is now. We need to pass R&D immediate expensing for the American people and our U.S. economy.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Arrington), the chair of the Budget Committee and my good friend.

Mr. Speaker, Mr. Arrington has obviously delved into this issue and particularly focused on economic growth and what the impact is in terms of the value for not just the economy and workers across the country but also the tax revenue to help make sure we can fund the operations here in government.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Hern), the chair of the Republican Study Committee, a fellow member of the Ways and Means Committee, and my friend and neighbor to the south.

Mr. Speaker, Mr. Hern highlighted that it is so important for us to have a strong America. It means we need to have a strong economy and good-paying jobs for workers, which means we need to have these provisions that make things work and make the economy grow.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentlewoman from West Virginia (Mrs. Miller), a member of the Ways and Means Committee and a good friend of mine.

Mr. Speaker, I am glad Mrs. Miller highlighted the impact on small businesses because that is one of the things that sometimes we think about, business provisions that affect large businesses, but small businesses are greatly affected as well by some of these provisions just because of being able to manage their cash flow.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Kustoff), another good friend of mine who is also on the Ways and Means Committee.

Mr. Speaker, I thank Mr. Kustoff. It is so important, as he highlighted, to have innovation and to support that so that we can have good economic growth. That is a key thing that has always helped America over the long term.

Mr. Speaker, I yield to the gentleman from Utah (Mr. Moore), the vice chairman of the House Republican Conference and a fellow member serving on the Ways and Means Committee.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Utah (Mr. Moore). It is important to talk about these very important issues.

Mr. Speaker, may I inquire how much time is remaining.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Indiana (Mr. Yakym), who has shown great interest in being engaged in this issue of how do we actually reinstate the R&D immediate expensing.

I thank the gentleman. It is so important that the gentleman has taken such an active interest.

I now recognize for 2 minutes the gentleman from Alabama (Mr. Strong), a friend of mine, and a good guy.

I thank the gentleman for speaking about some of the important impacts on businesses within his district.

Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. De La Cruz).

Mr. Speaker, it is great that we have so many people from so many different districts talking about issues that are important to them and seeing the wide impact across the country.

Mr. Speaker, I recognize for 2 minutes the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Moran), another member of the Texas delegation, and a good friend of mine.

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman participating and highlighting how important it is in the Congressman's district and the impact on that part of the country in Texas.

Wichita, where I am from, is known as the Air Capital of the World for its pioneering role in the early days in American aviation. Today, in south central Kansas, it is brimming with companies continuing to push the limits of the aerospace industry, including in general and commercial aviation, but also space, defense, and unmanned aircraft systems.

All of these new advances in Kansas that developers, engineers, and manufacturers want require technology, and they require research and development, but these innovators tell me that the incentive just isn't there. Knowing that they have to amortize their R&D costs prohibits them from pursuing these technological advances. Let's change that by restoring immediate R&D expensing.

As I mentioned earlier, R&D expensing is primarily a jobs issue, and, without an incentive for home-grown R&D, the U.S. loses out on creating new jobs. As the R&D Coalition says, for every $1 billion of U.S. R&D spending, 17,000 jobs earning $1.4 billion are supported in the United States.

They also note that, if the R&D amortization policy is not reversed, the United States stands to lose 410,000 jobs, $57.5 billion in labor income, and $71 billion in R&D spending over the next year, and it is going to make America less competitive on the world stage.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the Members who shared their experiences and what we have heard from districts all across the country on this very important issue. As we have discussed here tonight, R&D expensing legislation is critical for our job creators, innovators, and everyday Americans. The health of our economy depends on us passing this bipartisan, commonsense legislation.

The legislation has broad support from Members in 43 States and both parties. As I said in my opening remarks and in the op-ed last month, the time to address R&D amortization may have been at the end of 2021, but with the start of the new tax-filing season a few weeks away, the next best time is now.

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

Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman from Kansas who represents a district that may be the second largest production ag district only to west Texas, the food, fuel, and fiber capital of the world.

In all seriousness, spending is out of control like never before in this country. Our debt is unsustainable, which is an understatement, maybe the biggest one of the night, and America's fiscal health is in rapid decline.

What is the formula? Reverse Biden's spending spree, right-size this bloated and weaponized bureaucracy, rein in mandatory spending, reform entitlements, root out all of this trillions in waste and fraud, and then return to progrowth, prowork, proenergy policies.

That last piece is critical. In order for us to bring this indebtedness in this great country of ours--it has surpassed World War II as the highest levels of indebtedness in the history of our country. We have to have growth. Growth is essential not only to reining

in deficits. It generates more revenue for the country and reduces spending by giving Americans better-paying jobs and allowing people to save and invest more of their hard-earned money.

CBO projects over the next 10 years we will have a paltry 2 percent economic growth. If we grow 1 more percent, we can help bring the deficit down by $3 trillion. We need $16 trillion, Mr. Speaker, in order to balance the budget, so growth will play a critical role.

In 2017, Republicans and President Trump passed tax reform. After that, we saw unprecedented, record investment in R&D, capital investment, growth, job creation, lowest unemployment, lowest poverty rates, lifting 6 million people out of poverty in this country. It had tremendous value to the country as a whole. All boats rose on the tide of prosperity.

In fact, the CBO projected that we would only grow the revenue from the tax cuts by $327 billion in 2021, the year after, and the revenues actually grew by tens of billions more. The following year, 2022, the CBO projected $353 billion. They were off by $100 billion. We got record revenue.

One of the biggest progrowth provisions in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was 100 percent business expensing. We need to give businesses the certainty to make the investment, supercharge America's competitiveness, and create more things in this country instead of depending on other countries for important products, making sure that we stave off what is projected to be a sustained recession if not stagnation.

We can do this, address inflation, save this country from a debt crisis, and reverse the curse of these failed economic policies and this unbridled spending. We can do it in part with progrowth, prowork, and proenergy policies.

I am proud to work alongside my friend from Kansas, a true leader on the Budget Committee, on the Ways and Means Committee, and on all things progrowth and making America the most powerful, most prosperous Nation in the world. I thank Mr. Estes for his leadership.

I thank the gentleman from Kansas, my good friend, for the time and for organizing this important event and for this Special Order.

I also thank the gentleman for his leadership on promoting pro-growth research and development policies.

Mr. Speaker, we are living through a time of great economic uncertainty created by the Biden administration.

This Republican House has an opportunity to provide some certainty to all American families and businesses by bringing back full and immediate deductions for research and development, capital expenditures, as well as by undoing lower interest deductibility limitations. Doing so would help create high-quality, good-paying jobs across our economy for businesses of all shapes and sizes.

My district in northern Indiana is no different. Many Hoosier companies have reached out to tell me what fixing those provisions would mean to them.

A major medical device company in my district had a $60 million impact in 2022, because they couldn't fully deduct their research and development expenses, and they expect a similar hit for 2023. That is a huge sum of money to be sucked out of our local economy unnecessarily.

However, the impacts aren't just felt in large gashes. There are thousands of less-visible cuts across Main Streets in my district, in our State, and across our country.

Family owned restaurants have told me they are putting off buying new kitchen equipment. Engineering firms that build our roads and bridges are holding off on new cutting-edge software. Also, suppliers to the R.V. and auto industry are spending less money on new machinery.

Mr. Speaker, the small businesses that are the engines of our economy have sand in their gears, and we have an opportunity to fix it.

About a month and a half ago, I was proud to lead a letter to Speaker

Mike Johnson signed by 145 of my non-Ways and Means colleagues calling for the return of full expensing for R&D and capital expenditures, as well as pro-growth interest deductibility. The high turnout shows just how important these provisions are to small businesses and workers across our great Nation.

I know my friend, Ways and Means Chairman Jason Smith, is hard at work on negotiations to fix these provisions. I hope both sides can come together on an agreement that provides wins for hardworking Hoosiers of Indiana's Second District.

I want to close by thanking Mr. Estes once more for his leadership in organizing this Special Order.

Mr. Speaker, it is great to see my colleague from Oklahoma from the Second District, our newest member of our Oklahoma delegation. I certainly know where his heart is on these issues that American taxpayers rely on us to be responsible for and for the money to be put to good use.

We have a critical tax cliff fast approaching at the end of 2025, with the majority of the TCJA's progrowth tax policies expiring. We are already seeing the devastating economic effects of TCJA's expired provisions, including the EBITDA interest deduction limitation, immediate deduction of R&D, and 100 percent bonus depreciation.

Ernst & Young projects that over 10 years, if the increased limitation on the interest deductibility is not repealed, 900,000 jobs will be lost; employee compensation will be reduced by $58 billion; and GDP will fall by more than $108 billion.

Twenty-six OECD countries use earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, and amortization, otherwise known as EBITDA, as an earnings-stripping limit, and zero countries in the OECD use the new U.S. EBIT-based limitation.

This stricter limitation on businesses will fall on the American worker in the form of lower wages and employment and make the U.S. less competitive in the global marketplace. We need to restore the EBITDA interest deduction limitation immediately.

Since the harmful R&D amortization requirement took effect in 2022, R&D spending's rate of growth has slowed dramatically, from 6.6 percent on average over the previous 5 years to less than 1 percent over the past 12 months.

China continues to offer a 200 percent super-deduction for R&D, and the United States remains uncompetitive at 20 percent. We need to restore immediate deduction for R&D costs, something that has been around since the middle 1950s.

Bonus depreciation will continue to ramp down for ensuing years: 80 percent in 2023, 60 percent for this year, 40 percent for 2025, 20 percent for 2026, and zero percent beginning in 2027.

Last year, the U.K. announced its commitment to make permanent its progrowth policy for full expensing. The U.S. should be looking to do the same to remain competitive in the global marketplace.

Mr. Speaker, this is more than just an economic issue. This is a national security issue. How can we expect to compete with China when it is more expensive to invest, innovate, and grow here in the United States of America?