Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman for his leadership in bringing this legislation to the floor. I had some prepared remarks that I want to give relative to the conservation easement part of this legislation because it is a hugely important…
Mr. Speaker, I thank the chairman for his leadership in bringing this legislation to the floor.
I had some prepared remarks that I want to give relative to the conservation easement part of this legislation because it is a hugely important issue to the people in southeastern Pennsylvania and many, many other States as well because through conservation easement transactions, tens of thousands of acres are preserved throughout the course of a year in a metropolitan region like Philadelphia and other
places around the country that preserves the habitat, the watersheds, preserves the natural resources of that area, allows farmers to keep farming, allows people to hold on to the great open space that creates the vistas and the quality of life that people want to have in their communities.
I had my prepared remarks ready to go to talk about why that is important once again to try to pass legislation to allow for at least some period of time to allow for those transactions to go forward because of the tax deductibility that would be present in the Tax Code.
But in listening to our colleague from Michigan a few minutes ago, to somehow throw out the proposal that since we passed this already a few weeks ago in a 1-year extension--that 1 year being 2014, the year we are already in, also the year that is going to expire in 21 days--to say somehow at this point in time of this legislative session, that is okay, that is how we will take care of conservation easements in the future, we will pass the 1-year extension as we did in the House, send it to the Senate, it will go ultimately to the President, look at the great job we did for conservation easements here in the United States, we gave them 21 more days' worth of decisionmaking time to determine whether or not they want to move forward with a transaction that will conserve open space and farmland around our country, that is pitiful in all due respect to all of our colleagues here in the House.
Mr. Speaker, we have legislation that has hundreds of cosponsors, Republican and Democrat here in the House. We have that same kind of bipartisan support in the Senate.
We have charities all around the United States calling in to Congress asking that this legislation be passed. Regardless of whether they are a group involved in conservation easements or in other charitable pursuits like food banks or the IRA issue, they want us to do something that we finally can agree to do and get it done by the end of the year.
I don't think that is too much to ask for Congress to do. Here we have the bill right in front of us that, on a wide bipartisan basis, is supported in the House and the Senate. We can pass it to make it a permanent part of the Tax Code so these groups can plan in the future and these individuals can plan in the future for how they want to help their charities in their communities. It is right before us, and yet we still have opposition to basically coming together to do what we all want to do to begin with. We need to really look ourselves in the mirror here over the next 24 hours and really think about why we are here in Congress.
I would hope, regardless of your party affiliation, you have a wonderful opportunity to help the charities in your community by passing this legislation to make a permanent change in the Tax Code, and that is something we can all reflect on in the 113th Congress as one time, one place, one bill we could come together on and help our communities and help our charities. So I ask all of our colleagues to support this legislation.
