Mr. Chair, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chair, we are making a choice today about the kind of future that we want. We can choose a future of more deficits and more debt piled onto our children, or we can continue having a…
Mr. Chair, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Chair, we are making a choice today about the kind of future that we want. We can choose a future of more deficits and more debt piled onto our children, or we can continue having a weak economy where people in their prime working years can keep leaving the job market.
Or we can choose a future where America's job creators, people who go to work every day, decide that they will be better off starting or moving their business overseas.
Or we can choose the future of more of the same, and it is not the wealthy who will suffer more of the same. It is the most vulnerable, low-income Americans trying to climb out of poverty. It is the middle class families who find it harder and harder to keep up, to get ahead-- people like my dad, a machine operator who is now retired as a United Steelworker.
It is our children and our grandchildren who will have to pay tomorrow for the mistakes that we make today.
But we can instead choose a better future, Mr. Chair, where the government learns to live within its means and move forward toward balanced budgets; a future where job-creating small businesses aren't punished by our Tax Code when they succeed; a future where we stop losing jobs and businesses to foreign countries with lower tax rates, when workers can finally get the pay raises they deserve, more money in their pockets, and more prosperity is widespread, not just concentrated on our coasts and a few large urban cities.
We will be voting soon on a budget that restores fiscal responsibility and paves the way for a world class Tax Code built for growth and a better future for our kids and our grandkids.
Yesterday, at the Joint Economic Committee, Mr. Chair, we held a hearing on the decline in business startups, the engines of job growth and innovation in America, and the role tax reform could play in reversing this downward spiral.
Among other things, here is what we heard yesterday at the hearing. First, simplify the Tax Code. Entrepreneurs spend way too much time and way too much money complying with the Tax Code instead of focusing on growing their businesses.
Second, lower the tax rates that our companies and employers pay. That is something that foreign governments around the world, both friends and foes, have already done to attract more jobs, more businesses.
Third, let companies of all sizes write off the cost of their growth- producing investment immediately, this is called expensing, instead of deducting them slowly from the taxes over many years under very complicated depreciation rules.
Fourth, stop punishing our businesses for investing overseas profits by bringing them back home to America. Move away from the system that double taxes American companies that do business overseas.
These steps will boost economic growth. Growing markets will give entrepreneurs the confidence to risk starting a business, which many won't even do today, as we have seen more and more startups not making it to the starting line.
More startups create more jobs, an average of six new jobs per startup, and more economic growth means continuing to spread that prosperity.
I am happy to report that these recommendations are a large part of our tax reform framework that has just recently been unveiled: simplicity, lower tax rates, expensing, stop double taxing our American businesses that do business abroad, reward investment in America, and boost economic growth.
We need a Tax Code that makes America the best place in the world to do business and grow your business and keep your business.
Our job creators who are corporate taxpayers now face the highest tax rate in the developed world. While other countries aggressively lower their tax rate, Mr. Chair, to attract new businesses, we left our businesses standing still.
Mr. Chair, the tax reform framework would slash our corporate rate from the highest in the world, at 35 percent, to a competitive 20 percent. Instead of the worst, we get much better. In a global economy, that is just not a luxury, that is a necessity.
Our tax reform framework will not only help American companies compete with foreign ones, but also bring capital back to America to invest and grow jobs here at home.
Let's look at how the Tax Code is punishing our small businesses who pay individual taxes as pass-throughs, not just with complex taxes but also high tax rates.
When Main Street businessowners went to sleep on December 31 of 2012, their highest tax rate was 35 percent. When they woke up the following year in January of 2013, Mr. Chair, their top rate spiked to 44.6 percent due to Obama administration policies.
Many on the other side of the aisle will say that most small businesses don't pay the top rate, but taxpayers who do pay the top rate, those small businesses, in many cases, are responsible for much of our economic activity and our employment as pass-through businesses.
Every small business owner dreams of being successful, and the high top rate punishes the very success that we want them to achieve in America. Adding to the Federal rate, the tax rate, the local rate, many of these small businesses pay over 50 percent in taxes.
The tax reform framework not only slashes rates for American employers but our small businesses as well. The top rate for pass- throughs will be 25 percent.
Another feature of the tax reform framework, Mr. Chair, would allow businesses of all sizes to deduct their business expenses, their investments, immediately through expensing. This would encourage companies to make the kind of investment like buying state-of-the-art equipment that would lead businesses to grow, create more jobs, pay better wages, higher economic growth, and the best part of all, larger paychecks for workers.
Mr. Chair, we have a choice to make. We can turn our backs on the most vulnerable Americans and doom them to more of the same, subpar growth, stagnant wages, more debt, less opportunity, a complex and outdated Tax Code that punishes job creation and investment in America, or I hope we choose a better path forward, a better future for Americans, bigger paychecks, and it starts today with the passing of this budget.
Mr. Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. Chair, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Florida (Mr. Francis Rooney).
Mr. Chair, I yield an additional 1 minute to the gentleman.
Mr. Chair, I yield 5 minutes to the gentleman from Minnesota (Mr. Paulsen), a senior member of the Joint Economic Committee, as well as a senior member of the Ways and Means Committee.
Mr. Chairman, I would again like to point out this little chart that shows facts. At the bottom of the chart, if the viewers can see, is the United States with our corporate tax rate. All of these other countries, most of whom are our friends, even France, is lower than the United States, Spain, Canada, Netherlands, Austria, Turkey, Italy, New Zealand, Japan--you can go on and on.
Mr. Chairman, we have the highest corporate rate in the industrialized developed world. Facts are a stubborn thing to deal with, Mr. Chairman. This budget, as Congressman Paulsen said, is the first step into dealing with something that we haven't dealt with in 31 years.
Mr. Chair, I reserve the balance of my time.
Mr. Chairman, I yield 3 minutes to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. LaHood), who represents the central part of Illinois, and is a new member of the Joint Economic Committee.
Mr. Chair, I yield an additional 1 minute to the gentleman from Illinois.
Mr. Chairman, I yield 1 minute to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Conaway), who is the distinguished chairman of the Agriculture Committee.
Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Mr. Chairman, America is at a crossroads, and this budget is about choices.
Mr. Chairman, there are moms and dads, single moms and elderly folks sitting at the kitchen table every night making choices on what to buy and what to pay for. They have to live within their means, Mr. Chairman.
The Federal Government, for too long, hasn't lived within its means, and this budget is about that. This budget is about tax reform. This budget is about growing our economy. We haven't seen the growth in this recovery that we have seen in others.
Mr. Chairman, I remember when I got my first job at McDonald's. My immigrant mother and my immigrant father sat me down and talked to me about the taxes that I would pay coming out of my first paycheck. I clearly remember my dad saying to me: Don't let the taxes that you pay stop you from saving most of this money, because in America, not only do you get taxed when you earn it, you get taxed when you save it, and if you save enough, you will get taxed when you die. That was my immigrant father with a fifth grade education. He was a steelworker.
Mr. Chairman, it is incredibly sad in America today when a successful entrepreneur will pay over 50 percent of what he or she makes in taxes at the Federal, State, and local levels.
Mr. Chairman, it has been 31 years since we reformed our outdated Tax Code, and now is the time--now is the time--at this crossroads to change the direction of America for our kids and our grandkids. I urge a ``yes'' vote on this responsible budget to live within our means, and I yield back the balance of my time.