Ernest Istook

Mr. ISTOOK

Mr. ISTOOK. Mr. Chairman, although the effect of this point of order would be to remove the distribution formula and leave us in limbo, which we hope to ultimately correct, nevertheless, we must concede the point of order.

Mr. ISTOOK. Mr. Chairman, we unfortunately must concede the point of order.

Mr. ISTOOK. Mr. Chairman, to the extent that the point of order is correctly applied against the entire paragraph, namely, the text from page 31, lines 14 through lines 21 to its entirety and not just to a portion thereof, to that extent and only that extent we would concede the point of order.

Mr. ISTOOK. Mr. Chairman, we concede this point of order against this section.

Mr. ISTOOK. Mr. Chairman, we concede this point of order.

Mr. ISTOOK. Mr. Chairman, despite the negative consequences, we believe we must concede this point of order.

Mr. ISTOOK. Mr. Chairman, we concede this point of order.

Mr. ISTOOK. Mr. Chairman, we concede this point of order.

Mr. ISTOOK. Mr. Chairman, I offer an amendment.

Mr. ISTOOK. Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the last word. Mr. Chairman, I think it is important that we understand more correctly what we are talking about here. We are talking about money that comes from the fuel taxes. When we drive a car or we drive a truck, we pay a fuel tax. Where does that money go? Right now, for every $6 in fuel taxes paid, $1 never even goes back to highways because it goes to mass transit funding. That is one of the reasons that we have a $400 billion backlog in road needs in this country. That is one of the reasons we have tens of thousands of unsafe bridges. It is one of the reasons we have tens of thousands of miles of roads that need improvement, that need to be safer, that need wider shoulders or better dividing. It is one of the reasons we lose billions of dollars each year in productivity because we do not necessarily pick our priorities right. It is not a question of whether it is nice and whether people say, yes, we would like to have a program to build more bike trails and pedestrian ways, and what has not been mentioned is that this money also goes for things like transportation museums and so forth. Of course people want that money. But if we ask them what is more important to them, is it more important to have the enhancements or to take care of the basics, this bill says that rather than having to take 10 percent, as the current standard requires, 10 percent of the surface transportation dollars and put them into the transportation enhancements, the pedestrian ways, the bike ways, the museums, they must, they must do it right now, we say let them have a choice. Let them work on improving safety first, if they say that is the highest priority. For goodness sake, put the money where the priority is the highest. Not just because people say, sure, I like this program, but is it the most important thing in a Nation with a $400 billion backlog because the highway trust fund has been decreasing. Every year this program is taking $600 million paid for by drivers and putting it into everything but roads through this transportation enhancement program. Let the States have a choice. Let them decide for themselves where their priorities are highest. I ask Members, they come to me and they say they need funding for a road. If Members vote that they do not think roads are their highest priority, do not ask for money for roads if Members want to divert that money. This provision is about options, letting people make priority decisions. We should not try to dictate to the States from Washington, D.C. that they cannot spend the money that drivers pay to relieve the congestion drivers are experiencing, and they have to spend it on other things. We should not be doing that. We have spent billions of dollars already that our roads needed that were mandated for these things. It is time to give communities a choice, not a commandment. That is what the amendment is about. The bill gives them a choice. The amendment says States do not have a say, they must take the money paid by drivers and put it into things that do not move as many people and do not move the goods and do not relieve the congestion and do not improve safety. They are definitely nice things to have, but when we have limited money, we have to make tough decisions. We are tying to make the tough decisions. I hope that every Member that thinks they have roads that are important in their community will remember whether they voted to say our communities should be able to address those needs, or Washington is dictating and saying they have no say in the matter, States are compelled to take 10 percent of their surface transportation dollars and take them away from the people who paid at the pump for roads. And do not tell me we need to adjust fuel taxes upward if we are not using the money rightly that we get right now. If we are not using the money for the intended purpose, if we are not honoring a trust fund principle and using user fees properly, for goodness sake, do not be asking to raise the fuel tax. There is some money paid by recreational people. We have $50 million in an off-road fund already to pay for trails. We have millions more in other provisions in this bill to pay for rails-to-trails, to pay for pedestrian ways, to pay for bikeways. We have some of those projects in this bill. There are some with merit; but we should not be dictating to the States what they do with the money their taxpayers pay, and it is coming back to them with a mandate to divert it. I ask for the defeat of the amendment.

Mr. ISTOOK. Mr. Chairman, if the gentleman will yield, I am willing to accept the amendment.

Mr. ISTOOK. Mr. Chairman will the gentleman yield? Mr. Lo BIONDO. I yield to the gentleman from Oklahoma.

Mr. ISTOOK. Mr. Chairman, first, of course, the amendment is not germane to the bill. It relates to the Secretary of Homeland Security, which is not within the jurisdiction of this legislation. Further, the amendment proposes to change existing law and constitutes legislation in an appropriations bill and therefore violates clause 2 of rule XXI, which states in pertinent part that an amendment to a general appropriation bill shall not be in order if changing existing law. This amendment gives affirmative direction, in effect, and I ask for a ruling from the Chair accordingly.

Mr. ISTOOK. Mr. Chairman, we would concede the point of order.

Mr. ISTOOK

Mr. ISTOOK. Mr. Chairman, we would concede the point of order.

Mr. ISTOOK. Mr. Chairman, we would concede the point of order.

Mr. ISTOOK. Mr. Chairman, we would concede that point of order.

Mr. ISTOOK. Mr. Chairman, we would concede the point of order.

Mr. ISTOOK. Mr. Chairman, I claim the time in opposition to the amendment.

Mr. ISTOOK. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Chairman, people are easily confused about what we are talking about here. And it is a very strange amendment that is being offered because, frankly, the amendment does not really do anything. It is an opportunity for people to get up and speak, but I will read, Mr. Chairman, what the text of the amendment says. It says: Take the dollar amount on page 67, line 23 and first reduce it by $75 million and then increase it by $75 million. Well, the net effect of that is zero. The amendment makes no change in the amount of the money in the bill for the IRS to enforce the tax laws. No change whatsoever. It is simply an opportunity for people to get up and talk about it. It deserves to be opposed as something that is senseless and, for that matter, that blocks reform. Because although it is labeled as a, quote, tax credit, the EITC, earned income tax credit, is not a tax credit program. It is an assistance program designed for people with low income that says you tell us how much you made, and if it is not enough we are going to send you a check. It is a public assistance program. Now, any other public assistance program, you have to go through a process of showing that you are eligible. If you want food stamps, you go through a process to be certified that you are eligible for it. If you want housing subsidies, you go through a process to be certified that before you get this money from taxpayers that you are actually eligible for it, you qualify. If you want temporary assistance to needy families, you are certified in advance as being eligible. The big problem with the EITC is it is a public assistance program where there is no oversight. There are 19 million, let me repeat that figure, 19 million Americans each year that file an income tax return and say send me a check, I claim this. It is not a tax refund. It is a check over and beyond whatever you may have paid in in your income taxes. And it has been proven over the years that a fourth to a third of all those claims are for people who do not qualify. It is costing taxpayers $10 billion a year. That is not small change. That is not harassing people as the gentleman from Tennessee (Mr. Cooper) I believe represented. That is saying if we are going to have $35 billion and $10 billion of it goes to people who do not qualify under the program going out of the Treasury, not a refund, not getting a refund for taxes you paid in, but a form of public assistance, maybe we ought to pay attention to whether people are actually eligible before we spend this much money. The program that the IRS is putting into place will not affect 80 percent of these 19 million people, but it is targeted to those that the IRS has reason to believe are the ones that are most likely to be part of that $10 billion a year that we are paying out that should not be paid out. We are saying we need you to do some verification to show to us that you are entitled to this taxpayer money just the same as you would do if you are asking for a government check for anything else. That is not burdensome. That is not too much. It really bothers me to hear the way that some of this rhetoric is being tossed about as though we are picking on people. No. People want the government to give them the check. If they qualify under the government program, then they have it coming. But they would not say I am just going to walk in off the street and say I ought to get food stamps, and that is it, and nobody ever checks to see if you are eligible. That is why we have this error rate, because we do not have anybody checking up on it. The IRS is trying to establish a system for the first time of doing some checking on this. Some people are more concerned about shoveling money out of the Federal Treasury faster, rather than saying we ought to be good stewards and prudent watchdogs of the taxpayers' money. That is all the IRS has tried to put into place. It really is rather silly to say that somehow we are even talking about or addressing this situation with an amendment that says add $75 million to this tax enforcement program and then take $75 million of it away. It is a wash. It does nothing. The IRS is trying to do something. It is trying to be good stewards of our money. And it is not only going after the people in the EITC that are not eligible for it, it is going after the corporate scofflaws. It is going after the big businesses or small businesses or whatever they may be that are not being honest in how they file with the IRS and treat their taxes. The provision of the bill that we are talking about on page 67 makes it clear that this overall figure is for necessary expenses of the Internal Revenue Service for determining and establishing tax liabilities; providing litigation support; conducting criminal investigation and enforcement activities; securing unfiled tax returns, collecting unpaid accounts; conducting a document matching program; resolving taxpayer problems through prompt identification, referral and settlement; compiling statistics of income and conducting compliance research; funding essential earned income tax credit compliance and error reduction initiatives and services as authorized by law. All of these, one big catch-all figure. The gentleman has not singled out in his amendment the earned income tax initiative or compliance of it. He has taken all of the enforcement activities of the IRS, a $4.2 billion account, and said from that $4.2 billion, subtract $75 million and then add $75 million. Total net change, zero. The amendment does not do what the gentleman has represented that it would do because it is not specific to EITC, but furthermore, the IRS needs to be going forward with this enforcement program. Those that say the government should send me a check above and beyond what may be a refund on my income taxes, they should have a little bit of burden of proof when the IRS says they ought to substantiate this; they ought to show something so that we can separate the honest people from the dishonest people that are costing taxpayers $10 billion a year. Mr. Chairman, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. ISTOOK. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume in closing. Mr. Chairman, if someone wants taxpayer money to assist them with temporary assistance to needy families, they would fill out the paperwork and show they are eligible before they received it; 100 percent would go through that process. If someone wants Social Security disability, for taxpayers to write a check for your disability, you would go through a precertification process 100 percent. If someone wanted Medicaid, if they wanted food stamps, they would, 100 percent of the citizens that want that assistance, would go through a process in advance. Here we have a program that on average writes a check of $1,700 beyond whatever they paid on their income taxes, writes a check on average for $1,700, and it goes out to 19 million Americans. And we are talking about saying maybe we ought to have at least a few thousand of them, of the people that are in the most questionable circumstances, go through a process of certification before they receive this taxpayers' money. And the $1,700 is an average. It goes up to $4,200. Only a fraction of the people under this program will be put through a certification, but maybe if we had more people going through the process, we would not have this error rate of a fourth to a third of the applicants, $10 billion a year, getting money to which they are not entitled. That is 3 times the error rate of these programs where they put 100 percent of the applicants through a certification process. We do not pick on people when we say they ought to show they are eligible before they ask for a check to be written out of the Treasury. We are not picking on anybody, and we are putting a lot more resources into going after the upper-income taxpayers. There is $4 billion for tax compliance efforts in this bill, and the other side of the aisle is complaining because we are spending a couple of hundred million on trying to keep $10 billion from walking out the door. We are not talking about people who are failing to send income to the Treasury, we are talking about people who are getting a check from the United States Government. It is common sense. It is just common sense to say that we ought to be doing a better job of making sure that people are eligible. It is not imposing on people that have to go through a lot more onerous requirements for other social assistance programs than this is asking a small fraction of those 19 million of those people to go through. This is common sense. And the amendment is saying well, we are going to reduce $75 million in this account and then add $75 million back in, and then claim they are accomplishing something. Talk about cosmetics, we do not need a cosmetic approach to this problem. We need a realistic approach to the problem. That is what the IRS is trying to do and that is why we are trying to help them do it. Mr. Chairman, hardworking people do not want people who are not qualified taking some of their hard-earned money, $10 billion a year, out of the U.S. Treasury. I ask that this amendment be defeated. Mr. Chairman, I yield back the balance of my time.

Mr. ISTOOK. Mr. Chairman, I ask unanimous consent that the remainder of the bill through page 157, line 2 be considered as read, printed in the Record and open to amendment at any point.

Mr. ISTOOK. Mr. Chairman, I reserve a point of order.

Mr. ISTOOK. Mr. Chairman, I move that the Committee do now rise.

Mr. ISTOOK

Mr. ISTOOK. I am told there is the possibility that the chairman and ranking member are discussing the timing of that right now. That is what I am told.