Floor Statements

Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to approving this permanent Republican tax break for Twinkies. That is exactly what this bill does. I think we should encourage charity, but also fiscal responsibility and accountability. This bill fails on both the latter two points.

A while back, there was a Texas official who often derided the war on poverty and Social Services in general by declaring: America is the only country in the world where most of the poor people are fat.

Well, in more recent years, we have come to understand that the challenges of obesity and poverty are different faces of the same problem, that diabetes and hunger sometimes go hand in hand. Disadvantaged neighbors, who too often lack enough to eat, too often make up for it with high, sugary, fatty foods that provide temporary relief from hunger, while making them more prone to disease.

According to the American Heart Association, 1 in 3 American children are obese or overweight. That is nearly triple the rate of 50 years ago, and 1 in 3 children will contract what was once called adult-onset type 2 diabetes.

Now, we can address these challenges through direct government expenditures like WIC, the Women, Infant and Children nutrition program, and we can address the challenges with tax expenditures like the one that is proposed here today.

I happen to believe that we need both of them, that we should be encouraging food banks and the businesses that donate to them--who do some excellent, some valuable work, we ought to encourage them to expand the work that they do. But when we tell a taxpayer that they don't have to pay the same taxes as their competitor if they donate for a good cause, we ought to be sure that that cause is good.

Just as we scrutinize the WIC program and other food security programs to ensure no misuse, no ineligibility--we want to see that every one of those dollars spent is spent efficiently--we need to do some of the same with reference to tax expenditures like that is proposed for permanent extension here.

We need accountability, and you lose that when this and the other provisions are extended forever and never carefully evaluated.

Now, the expenditure that is provided here for food donations is one that the law says is available for any food that is ``apparently wholesome food.'' The only problem is that apparently wholesome food includes much food that is not actually wholesome.

For example, some potato chips that have long since had their expiration date, they qualify. A can that fell off and was run over by the forklift and is very damaged, it qualifies.

Most particularly, if you have candy at Halloween and you overstocked and you have a significant amount of candy left--or for the Easter Bunny or at Christmas--the shelves at some food pantries overflow with these products.

Why is that? Because the business that donates the Twinkies or the stale potato chips is entitled to deduct not the cost of what they cost that business, but twice the cost of what it cost that business, and this bill makes that permanent.

Why should we at a time of great fiscal concern be paying twice the cost of stale potato chips and Twinkies and sugary nonwholesome and nonnutritious foods--why should we be paying for that?

It is a tax break that goes too far, that requires more careful evaluation. Indeed, one 2011 NPR report that was entitled ``Overburdened Food Banks Can't Say No to Junk'' because some of the same retailers that they rely on and count on for wholesome food dump the Halloween candy, dump the Easter eggs there, and they are available and treated just the way that wholesome food is treated.

I say, Mr. Speaker, let's encourage donating the good stuff, but let's not pay for the junk. We have the power to correct that problem by, instead of having a flawed permanent bill, having one that is available for evaluation on a more regular basis, just as we do with reference to these other provisions.

The cost of this bill is part of the overall cost and strategy to wreck our budget and reduce hunger programs in this country.

The same Republicans that are advancing this include a group that have characterized as welfare Pell grants, school breakfast programs, senior nursing care programs. They want to lump all that as welfare, and they say we just can't afford that.

I don't believe that we can't afford to target public resources where they are needed, whether they are tax expenditures or direct expenditures, but we don't need a permanent tax break for Twinkies and stale potato chips.

Let's take the fiscally responsible, accountable approach, not the irresponsible approach that is being advanced today, and reject this bill.

I thank the gentleman for yielding.

Mr. Speaker, today really demonstrates the House Republican fear of even trying. Their guiding strategic principle in this Congress is to do nothing and to be sure that no one else can do anything; and when they are eventually overwhelmed by a self-created crisis, as they have done with our transportation system, then to do next to nothing.

Bridges can literally fall down, highways crumble, public transportation systems are hobbled, but the House Republicans continue to reject a normal reauthorization of the Transportation Act of the type that, for decades, had broad bipartisan support in this House.

The only thing bipartisan about this last-gasp desperate effort to prevent a stoppage of transportation projects and the various groups that have endorsed it is that, after having had presented as a purported serious proposal by House Republicans that the way to stop the traffic slowdown was to have a mail or postal slowdown to finance it, they see this as a chance finally to at least prevent temporarily a total shutdown of our transportation project system. And so they are going along with it. I am not.

I realize that to have a sound transportation system, you can't do it week to week or month to month. There has to be some long-term planning. These bridges cannot repair themselves. These potholes don't fill themselves. We often hear that freedom is not free. Well, neither are freeways.

We have to have the revenue to have the kind of responsible national transportation system of the type that Dwight Eisenhower once provided the lead on when there was bipartisan support for reasonable public investment. Our competitors understand this. They are out there designing a 21st century transportation system that will be competitive, and we are being left in the potholes.

It is essential that we have a long-term bill, not this type of stopgap measure.

Thank you for your good work on this amendment. This will be the third bill that we have amended on it.

Mr. Chairman, seldom has a day gone by recently without a headline about some American company that is running for the border to avoid its tax bill. Indeed, today's New York Times has ``Patriot Flees Homeland,'' ``Drug Firms Make Haste to Elude Tax,'' and an excellent piece in Fortune magazine and The Washington Post that Ms. DeLauro referenced by Allan Sloan, entitled, ``Positively un-American tax dodges.''

It all gives new meaning to the term ``sunshine patriot'' when some corporation renounces its citizenship and

claims it is a citizen of the Cayman Islands or of Bermuda, where it does little or no business other than tax evasion.

The willingness of corporations to renounce their citizenship and leave America behind, at least in name only and at least when the tax bill is due but not when the desire for a government contract is there, has been recognized in the Senate Finance Committee, where Senator Wyden will conduct hearings next week on the best legislative approach to put a stop to this. But we can do something today to put a stop to what are called ``inversions,'' which are truly perversions of the Tax Code. As Mr. Sloan writes, ``Inverters are deserters.''

Today, Members can respond to this desertion by denying them government contracts. I would like to do more, but I believe this legislation adopted now in these other appropriations acts--repeating it for every one of them--will do a great deal to send a message about those who shirk their responsibilities to America at the same time they ask other taxpayers to use their tax money to finance government contracts.

The amendment says, if you renounce your citizenship and go abroad to avoid paying taxes, don't come with your hand outstretched to ask other taxpayers who stayed here and worked and contributed to the success of America--those that are proud to be American businesses and are paying their fair share--to pay for you to get a government contract. Don't ask them to put up their tax dollars to pay for your success.

We believe that this approach provides protection to the Treasury and responds to those corporations that have abandoned America.

Mr. Speaker, Republicans say they would like to help, but they claim we just don't have enough resources for medical research in order to address cures for Alzheimer's, cancer, Parkinson's, multiple sclerosis, and other dread diseases--diabetes, for example.

Wildfire season is approaching, and there are not enough resources to begin planning to prevent those wildfires because there is not enough money to actually address the fires when they begin, and delay is occurring.

We have hurricane season and tornadoes all over the country, but there is not enough money for the National Weather Service to give us all of the details we need.

Only yesterday, we learned that Republicans were refusing, once again, to correct the bankrupt transportation fund. The best they can do is postpone the bankruptcy into next year--after the election--as our highways crumble and bridges literally fall down.

As for the comprehensive safety inspection of our food and our drugs, they would like to do it, but there is just not enough money, and there are not enough funds available to monitor effectively infectious diseases or to produce vaccines to stop other diseases.

There is not enough to adequately staff our Federal prisons. There is not enough to fully fund Federal law enforcement. There is certainly not enough to provide strong, effective foster care for the many children, after having been abused and neglected, who are removed from their homes.

As for workforce development, so that we can be competitive with our friends abroad, there doesn't seem to be the resource to permit children from pre-K to postgrad to achieve their full God-given potential.

While there are so many vital needs that we just don't seem to have the resources to address, these same Republicans tell us today that we can afford to borrow from the Chinese or the Saudis--or whoever will lend to us--the resources to deliver bonuses to some people. They urge more public debt to fund more bonuses.

While they rightfully argue on every expenditure program that we should be looking for evidence-based programs--programs that actually work and that provide the promised outcomes--and that we ought to eliminate duplication and inefficiency, they have absolutely no interest in evidence-based tax expenditures, which is what is involved today. When the evidence conflicts with their ideology, they abandon evidence and pursue ideology.

The evidence-based approach to this particular expenditure could not be clearer. What is involved here is that when any business goes out and obtains machinery, a vehicle, a truck, a building, they depreciate it over the useful lifetime of that asset--standard accounting principles.

What is involved here today is Washington math. It is the Washington manipulation of traditional accounting rules. It is a matter of violating those traditional accounting rules, and we have learned from the economic studies that that is a very sorry, not evidence-based investment.

Indeed, even as a stimulus, the analysis shows that, for every dollar that is invested, we get 20 cents of growth. A fellow could go bankrupt with that kind of economics, and that is exactly what they would have the country doing and not meeting its other needs while funding something that doesn't work.

Both the Federal Reserve bank and Goldman Sachs--which is not exactly a Democratic organization--concluded this year that letting this special tax treatment expire that they want to make permanent and extend forever will not have any significant economic impact.

Today's bill is an example of the very kind of waste and inefficiency line items that they always say, in campaign rallies, they can discover and eliminate, but which, today, they are perpetuating.

I am for a pro-growth, pro-jobs creation set of government policies-- including tax policies--that promote competitiveness. It is competitiveness that involves an adequate transportation system, a trained workforce, the research in medicine as well as in technology to help us compete, but we don't have the Federal resources to hand out one bonus after another to corporations when we know it won't work, when it will not grow our economy and at the same time that the same people who are advocating for policies that don't work refuse to pay for policies that do work.

We should reject this bill. It is not in the interest of the country. It may be good politics in an election year, but it is bad economic policy, as near every economist who has looked at the issue in an objective way has concluded.

Mr. Chair, I thank my colleague. I have been pleased to join her in adding the language of this type to each appropriation bill that has thus far been approved in the House.

I am surprised that there could be any opposition to it today because all this amendment is saying is, if you renounce your citizenship and go abroad to avoid paying taxes, don't come with hand outstretched to ask the other taxpayers who stayed here and worked in America and who are proud to be American businesses and are paying their fair share, don't ask them to put their tax dollars into providing you a government contract.

It seems to me very apparent that some corporations are willing to do their fair share in paying for American security, energy and water projects, and other vital government services and some are not. There are a string of corporations who have decided they would keep their business operations in America, but they would suddenly renounce their American citizenship and become a citizen of one of these island kingdoms. That is not the American approach of fairness in paying for the services that we need.

This amendment would put an end to that renunciation of citizenship and asking for taxpayer-funded business. It is equitable; it is fair. We cannot have the resources that we need to remain the greatest Nation in the world without having every American citizen contributing their fair share. Most are. Those who renounce their citizenship and nominally declare that they are now a foreign citizen and not subject to full American taxation, they are not carrying their fair share.

I urge adoption of this amendment, an equitable amendment, for fairness in our public policy.

Madam Chair, that is very good to hear.

I join in supporting this amendment as a coauthor of it. Multinational corporations that do business around the globe have an even greater interest in world order and in national security. They should not be paying a lesser rate of taxes than corporations that focus their business right here in America.

Unfortunately, some of them scheme to avoid their fair share and to shift the burden to smaller businesses and to individuals. Some of these same companies have on more than one occasion paid more to their lobbyists to lobby this Congress and the Treasury to avoid paying taxes than they actually pay to the Treasury. It has been a pretty wise investment for them because our Tax Code is a mess. It is riddled with preferences and loopholes and one exception after another.

This amendment addresses one of the most egregious tax gimmicks. That is where a corporation actually renounces its American citizenship, declares itself a citizen of some other country, and then continues operations in

America, demanding the full protection of the laws and the military and the educational system that it refuses to contribute a fair share to pay for. Tax lawyers call it an ``inversion''; I call it a perversion of our tax laws.

To add insult to injury, some of these same corporations, which have abandoned their citizenship, then ask for American government contracts paid for with the very tax dollars from the small businesses and individuals to whom they have shifted the tax burden.

American companies that stay and contribute to building our country and keeping her strong at home and abroad deserve a level playing field, and that is what this amendment does.

The action that we take in approving this amendment today sends a message to executives that they can pretend that their company is located on some Caribbean beach to avoid paying taxes, but Congress is not going to put its head in the sand about this kind of tax dodging.

This Congress has a constitutional obligation to approve military action before any President decides to shoot first and ask questions later. A 12-year-old resolution, enacted in the aftermath of 9/11, should not provide a basis for endless war.

Some of the same self-certified smart people who were talking about mushroom clouds and weapons of mass destruction are, once again, trying to stampede us into war. We have been there, and we have done that, and America is still paying a terrible, terrible price for their past failures, though they refuse to acknowledge them.

Protecting our Embassy in Baghdad is one thing--a true emergency--but if any President wants to launch offensive military action, they need to come and make a specific case to this Congress for authorization, just as President Obama said he would do last year on Syria, not some convoluted interpretation of a resolution from a different time and circumstance.

If there is a case for war, have the courage to come here and make it, but don't rely on an open-ended authorization of military force from long ago.

Mr. Speaker, it is clear that Republicans would dig our country into another trillion dollars of debt, borrowing from the Chinese, the Saudis, whoever will lend it to us.

They have already approved borrowing $614 billion for business tax breaks, and they have told us that there are more on the way, more tax privileges, more tax exceptions, more tax advantages.

This bill today is just another chapter in their ledger of accounts payable for the American taxpayers. Such fiscal irresponsibility doesn't represent a plan for genuine tax relief for small businesses or for anyone else.

I will say that I agree with them, that small businesses have every reason to complain, as do individual taxpayers, because the Tax Code that they have done so much to write is riddled with special treatment for those who pay more to their lobbyists here in Washington than they do to the U.S. Treasury.

It has been a wise investment for them, but a pretty sorry outcome for small business and individual taxpayers. We have some multinational companies who have set up hundreds of offshore subsidiaries to shift their profits out of America and into a place where they don't pay a dime.

I can tell you that the cleaning crew at the headquarters of General Electric pays a higher tax rate than General Electric does. That is not fair. They pay a higher tax rate than Joe's Bakery or Patty's Taco House down in San Antonio.

That is not fair. It ought to be corrected; but instead, they have added almost another $100 billion in tax loopholes that they have proposed and have approved in committee to help those folks continue dodging their taxes.

At the same time, the proponents of today's bills tell us that America simply cannot afford more to educate its children. Only the day before yesterday, the Senate refused to address the problem of soaring student debt, now bigger than credit card debt, exceeded only by the giant debt they want to incur for more tax breaks.

They tell us: we can't afford to do the research necessary to cure Alzheimer's or to find new solutions to cancer and AIDS and other dreaded diseases.

This is not about borrowing to raise small business up. This is just an excuse to reduce the government investment that we need to grow our economy.

Apparently, to the Republicans, deficits only matter when asking seniors and students and others to sacrifice, but not when it comes to adding one tax break after another.

Now, how did we get to the situation that we are in today? Well, there has been a convenient amnesia about the history of tax reform in this Congress. Last January, the gentleman from Ohio--the Speaker--and the gentleman from Virginia (Mr. Cantor) came to this floor and they said: America, have we got a deal for you.

We have got a great deal for you. This big old fat Tax Code that is bigger than the Bible many times over, that we helped expand to resolve the needs of our special interest supporters, we are going to put it on a diet. We are going to thin it down.

We are going to give you a simple Tax Code that is easy to comply with. In addition to that, we are going to lower your rate; and you know what, we are going to do all that, and we are not going to add a penny to the national debt, and we will keep the rates relatively the same for everybody.

They reserved H.R. 1. They said: it is so important, we are going to make it the number one priority here. Where are we on that bill, I would ask the gentleman today; and I can tell you it is still reserved for the Speaker.

They have never brought it out, put it on this table, and given the American people a chance to vote on it because what happened was they went through a long process, they produced their draft bill, and the lobby went wild against it. They could not stand up to the very people that helped them write the complex, unfair Tax Code that we have today.

They couldn't stand up to those special interests, so that bill, 18 months later--not the result of anything the Democrats did, not the result of anything the President did--they couldn't agree among themselves about how to respond to all those special interest pressures.

So they are back today, going one little bill at a time to add a few hundred billion here, a few hundred billion dollars there, and not provide the comprehensive tax reform they told us, themselves, they would be providing, and that is why we find ourselves in the predicament we are in today.

I agree with the gentleman, people in Ohio, across America, in Texas, and elsewhere, that they have reason to question this Congress, because a promise is just like that.

Promises to bring reform, to work together in a bipartisan fashion left on the cutting room floor because special interests, the people that don't pay their fair share of taxes today, they want to keep it that way. They want to continue to disadvantage small business and individual taxpayers.

Today, we need to say ``no'' to this measure and ``no'' to their other temporary measures and demand real reform.

Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. Speaker, across America, for 30 million schoolchildren implementation of the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act is working. Schools are literally stepping up to the plate with a plate of healthier food. Indeed, for school lunches in Texas, 99 percent

of Texas school districts are successfully serving meals that meet strong nutritional standards. In most of the schools I visit, 99 percent is an A-plus.

First Lady Michelle Obama has provided impressive leadership in getting students, families, all of us, to pay a little more attention to food quality, to encourage kids to be more physically active, to get moving, and to grow up healthy. Active, healthy kids do better in school, and they grow up to be more productive citizens who can help in moving our country forward.

Today's bill presents the question of whether we are to wave good-bye with a waiver to healthy school lunch standards. This bill that we are about to consider is not the only place where unhealthy congressional action lurks. At the very same moment that the Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee was weakening school nutrition standards with a waiver, the House Ways and Means Committee, on which I serve, approved a bill to expand a tax subsidy for ``apparently wholesome food.'' That sounds good. The only problem is that the statutory definition of ``apparently wholesome food'' does not actually limit itself to the wholesome. It includes Halloween candy, Twinkies, Pop Rocks, stale potato chips, and other expired junk food, all of which receive a taxpayer subsidy. I think that is a little hard to stomach.

In a Nation where one-third of our children are overweight or obese, we should neither be subsidizing junk food nor repackaging healthy school meal standards into less healthy meals.

We are already spending in America an estimated $245 billion every year on diabetes. Rates of dietary-related Type 2 diabetes are skyrocketing among children and young adults. Since many of our children consume up to half of their daily calories at school through the school lunch and school breakfast programs, their health depends upon the nutritional quality of the food they are served.

Today, we should not take a giant step backwards. Let's join against this push to lower standards for our Nation's children. They deserve the healthiest future possible.

Madam Chair, I move to strike the last word.

Madam Chair, I am in favor of the amendment. Hopefully, from the silence that we have heard, there is bipartisan support for this amendment because I know there is a bipartisan commitment here that competition is very much the American way.

If you have two companies, as happens all over America, competing on different government contracts, we usually come out with the best result from that competition. But the question with this amendment, which I am pleased to join the gentlelady from Connecticut in offering today, is whether we ought to advantage companies that renounce their American citizenship in favor of finding an office on the beach in Bermuda or in Ugland House in the Cayman Islands.

The other company is an American company, not only when it comes time to put its hand out for a government contract but also when it comes time to put its hand out to pay the taxes that it earned on its American business.

Which one of these companies should have a competitive advantage?

I think it is the one that stayed home and was an American, patriotic company and did not dodge its part of the responsibility for paying for our national security, which is so important to international commerce, and for other vital services.

American companies that stay and contribute to building America and that keep her secure at home and abroad deserve a level playing field, and that is all that this amendment does. If a Cayman company doesn't have to pay taxes on some of its income, of course it can underbid the company that stayed in America, that made it in America, that paid its taxes, and then asked to have a level playing field to compete for American business.

The history in this Congress, unfortunately, is that many very large companies pay their lobbyists more to lobby this Congress than they pay to the Treasury in taxes, and it has been a very wise investment because they have been able to have one loophole, one special preference, one advantage, one exception--one more bit of complexity to our Tax Code--in order to avoid paying their fair share.

The companies that are operating in the Cayman Islands and in Bermuda are reporting huge amounts of income earned in those countries, largely from stripping off earnings that they have here in America and shifting them there through interest gimmicks, through dividend gimmicks, through intellectual property gimmicks. They avoid paying taxes not only on the tiny amount that they might have earned from an occasional sale in the Cayman Islands but from all of the sales from which they are able to strip off earnings and shift them to this island paradise.

They are looking for, basically, a shell game. I am not talking about seashells on the beach in the Cayman Islands. I am talking about the shell game that exists when these companies come in, renounce their American citizenship, keep the form and operation of their business here in America, but claim that they are suddenly no longer citizens under the American flag that we honor but are under the flag of some foreign nation. They basically are sending Uncle Sam a postcard that reads: ``Sorry. You can find me on the beach. Glad you are not here.'' That is the answer that they give when it comes time to pay their taxes, but then they have the audacity to come and ask other taxpayers--other taxpaying businesses and individuals who have done their fair share, and then some, for American security--they ask for government business at taxpayer expense.

This amendment is set to send the executives a message: they can play all they want to on the beach to avoid taxes, but Congress is not going to put its head in the sand. They can have fun in the sun, but Congress refuses to let the rest of the Americans, who are working hard to pay their taxes, get burned by having to pay not only for the taxes that these tax dodgers haven't paid but for government contracts that are paid for with taxpayer money.

Let's support competition, and let's support American companies that are paying their fair share. Let's adopt this amendment.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, there are few greater threats to the security of American families than those which could arise from the failure of the ongoing nuclear negotiations with Iran.

Parts of this bill seek to disrupt the administration's tough, persistent diplomacy. Some would even assign to Israel the job of starting what could become World War III. Even the Bush-Cheney administration rejected that approach.

Iranian Revolutionary Guard hard-liners may ultimately doom these negotiations. Our responsibility is to ensure that hard-liners here don't do the obstruction for them.

Our arsenal of democracy includes more than bombs. It includes tough negotiations and strong sanctions to reach a carefully monitored, verifiable agreement that will protect our families and our allies.

Given the high cost of failure, we certainly cannot afford to surrender to defeatists, who capitulate on the negotiations before they are even completed. It is too soon to wave the white flag and give up in favor of war.

The obstinate objections raised last year to the interim agreement were proven to be unjustified. The International Atomic Energy Agency has determined that Iran has taken verifiable actions to halt the progress of its nuclear program.

Let's give peace a chance.

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

Madam Speaker, I join in supporting this bill to combat sex trafficking of children that are in the foster care system. When children come into foster care, they are at risk for exploitation because of the abuse and neglect that they have already suffered in their original family and because of the sense of isolation that they often feel when they have suddenly been removed from their home. Those who prey on children, especially sex traffickers, know this and they take advantage of these youth.

Children are removed from their home; they are bounced around from one place to another often; and then, in my State, when they reach 18, they are told they are on their own. That is a situation that invites, especially for young women, the dangerous sex trafficking in which they are exploited.

There is bipartisan support for this bill. It originated from a thoughtful hearing, with some very strong witnesses describing the problem. It is bipartisan. It is also a modest step forward. It is redirecting our welfare agencies, our child welfare agencies around the country, in what they do. I think that it will provide some modest help in saving lives.

It would do even more if, instead of just new requirements for these States, it were adding new resources. It adds very little in the way of resources, but I think it will be helpful in directing the attention of each of these agencies in the various States to focus on this very serious problem, to give us the data to make the argument to do more in the future.

Because so many of these young people will eventually age out of the system after having been moved around from one home to another, it is important that we help them be able to move into the workforce. In that regard, there was a problem with the bill when one particular provision was removed from the bill because it cost about a million dollars in additional administrative expenses and there was apparently no way found to cover that cost.

I believe that providing a young person who ages out at age 18 from the foster care system with a birth certificate and a Social Security card is a worthwhile thing to do. Chairman Reichert promised to work with us on this in committee. He has. That provision has fortunately been restored here in this bill. It has been restored, however, in a way that really borrows from another provision that is also important to our foster youth, and that is a provision called Family Connections.

The Family Connection grants program is designed to try to connect children with grandparents, with other family members to help in the search for relatives of the foster children who might provide them a home. It provides only about $15 million a year, which is hardly enough to cover the need across the entire United States to provide better connection. If this measure were fully adopted, there would no longer, under the Republican budget rules, be a way to pay for the Family Connections program, which is another vital way that we protect these foster youth.

The Children's Defense Fund, which does support the bill, wrote to us in committee to find a way to restore the provision that cost about a million dollars a year and pointed out that the same day that the committee would not provide a million dollars extra per year, it did find a way under the same budget rules to find not a million, but $310 billion to cover corporate tax breaks.

I believe that this measure is helpful. It is a good step forward. It is a modest

step forward that would have benefited from not taking from one in order to help the other when it comes to foster children. We need to be doing more for our foster youth, not only on sex trafficking, but in other ways, more than we are able to accomplish under the strict budget rules today. There is a real inconsistency in saying we cannot find additional revenues to pay for something as serious as this when we can afford to borrow up to $310 billion for various corporate tax breaks, the first of which has already been approved here in the House in our last week.

With that, I reserve the balance of my time.

I reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I yield 3 minutes to our colleague from California (Ms. Bass), the chair of the Congressional Caucus on Foster Youth, who worked so diligently on this around the country.

I yield an additional minute to the gentlewoman from California.

Madam Speaker, I continue to reserve the balance of my time.

Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from New York (Mrs. Maloney), who has already spoken eloquently this afternoon about this problem in connection with another bill, to address the issues raised by this bill and the serious problem of sex trafficking.

Madam Speaker, at this time, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Texas (Ms. Jackson Lee), my colleague.

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

Madam Speaker, I want to thank Chairman Reichert for his leadership on this measure.

In this place, we need to make what progress we can under the conditions that exist and make as much of it as possible. I hope that the Senate will respond to this measure. But in order to provide an effective response, we need to have the revenues to provide the resources along with the requirements to meet the needs of our foster youth.

A few weeks ago, I met with a number of attorneys in San Antonio who work with foster youth, particularly those who are aging out, as well as a number of community service groups, religious and nonreligious in their orientation. They describe immense problems that our foster youth face. When they age out at age 18, only about 2 percent of those young people in the San Antonio area ever end up in college.

Many of them do get a substantial taxpayer subsidy over their lives. Unfortunately, it is a subsidy in our jails and in our penal system after they are engaged in some harmful conduct.

This bill is one step that we can take to address the exploitation of these young people, particularly of young women. There are broader problems out there that need our attention, but I favor moving forward with the progress that we can make today to address this one critical problem.

I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, this bill represents only the first of many installments of hundreds of billions of dollars that the Republicans plan to finance with more debt, borrowing from the Chinese or whoever will lend it to us. Surely we don't need any more research this afternoon to know that such an irresponsible approach is the wrong way to go.

In January of last year, Republicans came to this floor and they told us that they had reserved H.R. 1 for a bill that would do it all. It was going to simplify the Tax Code, it was going to lower the rates, and it would not add a penny to the debt because it would all be financed by closing loopholes.

Where is that bill? It is still reserved, and it will be reserved until the end of this term because the truth of the matter is Republicans could not stand up to the special interests that like those loopholes, that like the complexity of the Tax Code, that benefit from that complexity. They would not stand up to pass a bill that was fiscally responsible.

Both parties, as the chairman has indicated, have repeatedly supported temporary extensions, but neither has had the audacity to come to this floor and say we are going to borrow enough to make it permanent without closing a single loophole. They are doing exactly the opposite of what they have repeatedly promised us and the American people that they would do.

I support a permanent research and development credit to incentivize research for new products. It has never been a question of whether to support research, but how to do it and how to pay for it. And if the only goal is to encourage more job growth, there are ways we can redesign this credit to get even more growth than it does now.

The Government Accountability Office said the credit in its current form is a windfall for some corporations, and some multinationals have used it as a way to get the taxpayer to subsidize research here and then shift the benefits overseas.

I believe a better research credit on a permanent basis is the best way to encourage growth, not an irresponsible unpaid tax credit.

Madam Speaker, I support a permanent research and development credit to incentivize research for new products.

For decades, there has never really been any question about whether we should incentivize research. The question has been how--how to pay for that incentive and how to ensure that it actually encourages more jobs and more economic development with desirable research that would not otherwise happen without the credit.

Until today, Republicans who claimed to be for fiscal responsibility before they were against it have not been so brash as to demand that we finance this entire research credit on a permanent basis and similar legislation by borrowing more money.

A Government Accountability Office investigation of this credit concluded that a few corporations snatched most of the credit and that ``a substantial portion of credit dollars is a windfall, earned for spending what they would have spent anyway, instead of being used to support potentially beneficial new research.''

This credit is just another type of special treatment that a few giant multinationals can count on to lower their already low tax rates.

Last month, The Wall Street Journal reported the complaints of one giant. It said that, without this credit, its tax rate would climb effectively from 16 percent all the way to 18 percent.

Another corporation complained that its rate would go from 13 percent to 19 percent. Most of the small businesses that I represent in my part of Texas would be delighted to have a rate at that level. They pay substantially more.

Multinationals can use this taxpayer subsidy to finance research that produces patents and copyrights and the like that are then owned by offshore tax haven subsidiaries that pay little or no taxes.

One company investigated by Senator Levin in the Senate last year did 95 percent of its research and development right here in America, but then it shifted $74 billion of its earnings to an Irish subsidiary.

Apparently, the most effective multinational research anywhere in the world has focused on how to avoid paying for their fair share of financing our national security.

These are companies that ship both jobs and profits overseas. They are not about making it in America. They are about taking it from America. And that shifts the burden to small businesses and individuals.

Nor is all of this taxpayer-subsidized research beneficial to the public. For example, some of the research that was done for the electronic cigarettes, the latest fad to addict our children to nicotine, qualified for this tax subsidy.

Meanwhile, the House Republican budget undermines vital private research that is funded through the National Institutes of Health for Alzheimer's, for cancer, for Parkinson's, and for other dread diseases. They say we cannot afford to do what is necessary in research for those.

They also cut research for efforts to ensure that taxpayers get their money's worth from our investment in public services. Without adequate research, you cannot determine whether an initiative that is proposed justifies Federal dollars or is truly evidence-based.

I think we should reject today's proposal in favor of a research credit that actually incentivizes necessary research made in America and which is paid for, in part, by comprehensive reform of the credit itself.

As for comprehensive reform, from day one of this Congress, H.R. 1 was reserved for the much-ballyhooed Republican comprehensive tax reform. And yet we are well through this Congress

and it still says, ``Reserved for Speaker.''

That is because the Republicans couldn't agree on which tax loophole to close to maintain a revenue-neutral--a not borrowing more money--and as a result of not being able to do what they said they would do----

Because they told us January of last year they would be here with a simpler, fairer, lower tax rate, but they can't agree on how to pay for it because they are dominated by lobby groups that want to protect the very complexities and loopholes that plague this tax system--because they couldn't do that and have not done that, they are now back, as the gentleman says, with the first of not one or two but of many provisions to make them permanent, and pay for it with either borrowed money or mandatory cuts.

I think that is a serious mistake.

Today's bill represents only the first installment of more tax breaks to come that are not paid for or are paid for with mandatory cuts. Surely, we don't need more research today to know that that is the wrong way to go, it is the irresponsible way to go, and it ought to be rejected.

Mr. Chairman, this budget is too weak. It is too weak in all the wrong places and in all the wrong ways. It is weak on opportunity. It is weak on competitiveness. It is weak on dealing with the tax avoidance and loopholes that would allow us to invest in America. The House Republican budget actually grows the deficit--the opportunity deficit.

A strong budget would help our students earn degrees without mortgaging their futures in order to achieve their full God-given potential, and it would enable an educated workforce that will allow us to be competitive in the world economy.

A strong budget would invest in life-saving medical research, which would grow our economy and would respond to the folks from San Antonio who are here today to ask for more for Alzheimer's research, not by taking it from AIDS or cancer research, but by investing more to get the cures in order to save the lives and create the jobs that America ought to be about.

A strong budget would invest in infrastructure, in roads and rails and bridges and harbors, like the Chinese are doing to move goods and move people and be competitive.

A strong budget would ensure seniors' dignity in retirement, not what AARP says about this budget--that it would weaken the programs that provide the very foundation of health and retirement security for current and future generations.

I urge the rejection of this weak Republican budget in favor of needed investments in our education, our infrastructure, our research, and our retirement security.

Those investments can be made by simply asking those who have been so privileged and who have enjoyed so many tax loopholes to pay their fair share for the future of America. I believe it is an investment for a stronger America, which will afford more opportunity to every family.

I ask for the rejection of this budget in favor of a strong budget that is strong for America, strong for our economy, and strong for opportunity.

I would just like to thank you for the work that you are doing on this, and I believe our real message is to the many people out there--some of whom may even think that this law has been repealed. They have tried so many times.

As you pointed out a little earlier, this is an opportunity that is there for the next 5 days. Get beyond all the political chatter. Turn to a group like the American Cancer Society or the American Diabetes Association. Look at the information that is there.

Then go to one of the many enrollment fairs we are having across San Antonio this weekend. There is one up in Austin that is going to go almost 24 hours straight. These are opportunities to get out and do this.

I know you had a very successful enrollment fair in San Antonio. I had one over at Progreso Hall. Our colleague, Pete Gallego, had one out at Palo Alto. These have been opportunities for a wide range of our neighbors to come out and participate. We just want to encourage them to do more.

I think, if we keep working together, we can find ways to strengthen and improve this, but the main thing is for our families to get out there now.

I think, increasingly, most folks are realizing, as you pointed out, with so many efforts to repeal, that the only alternative that they offer is ``Nothing Care.''