Jim McCrery

Mr. McCRERY

Mr. McCRERY. Mr. Speaker, at this time I would yield 3 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Texas (Mr. Brady), a member of the Ways and Means Committee.

Mr. McCRERY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 1\1/2\ minutes to the distinguished gentleman from California (Mr. Herger), the ranking member of the Trade Subcommittee of the Ways and Means Committee.

Mr. McCRERY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, I rise in strong opposition to the bill before us today, just as I did the last time this bill was on the floor. It is not exactly the same, but basically it is a bill that would patch, so to speak, the AMT, and then increase other taxes to the same amount as the baseline says the patch costs. Let me make one thing clear. Republicans are for patching the AMT, a 1-year patch on the AMT. We are for, in other words, freezing the AMT in place just as it is today or just as it was for the last tax year. Where we differ with the majority, at least so far, is over the question of whether we need to, quote, pay for the patch by raising other taxes. We have had this debate before on this floor. We know where this debate is headed. The President's budget, by the way, includes a 1-year patch on the AMT without a pay-for. So that should be made clear to everyone, and that is what we have been proposing for quite some time. That is what the Senate passed by a rather large vote very recently. In fact, 88-5 I believe was the vote that the Senate passed a 1-year patch without tax increases. I applaud that action of the Senate. It does what the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee and I as the ranking member of the Ways and Means Committee, and the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee wrote in a letter to the President several weeks ago saying that we promised to pass a 1-year patch on the AMT in a manner that the President would sign. The Senate bill represents that promise. This President has said he will sign that bill. The President has said he won't sign the bill that is before us today. In fact, the distinguished majority leader of the Senate is so intent on not paying for the AMT that he is refusing to send the bill to the House right now so as not to give the majority here another opportunity to load it up with doomed tax increases. Yet our friends on the majority are once again pulling on their helmets and fastening their chin straps, ready to run into the brick wall of using tax hikes to prevent other tax increases. The whole thing would be comical if the implications were not so serious. In recent weeks, the Treasury Secretary, the Acting Commissioner of the IRS, and the chairman of the IRS oversight board have all written to Congress to urge prompt action on the AMT and warned that continued delay on the patch will result in delayed refunds, confusion, and higher costs to the Treasury. In a recent letter, Secretary Paulson cautioned that ``enactment of a patch in mid to late December could delay issuance of approximately $75 billion in refunds to taxpayers who are likely to file their returns before March 31, 2008. Millions of taxpayers filing returns after that date may also have their refunds delayed.'' Well, here we are now in mid-December and, unfortunately, the majority in the House continues to play a dangerous game of chicken with the American taxpayer and the clock is winding down. When the House debated H.R. 3996 last month, Republicans argued against applying PAYGO to the AMT patch. We pointed out that if Congress has to increase taxes to prevent a tax increase, then the majority's baseline has baked in trillions of dollars of tax increases over the next decade as the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts reach their current expiration dates at the end of 2010. The majority's logic seems to go like this: To prevent a tax increase, we must enact a tax increase. Either way it's a tax increase, unless you do as we're suggesting, which is to prevent the tax increase by just patching and freezing the AMT in place as we did last year and the year before. The House Democrats' version of PAYGO forces Congress to decide whether we will let those tax increases take place or replace them with other tax hikes. But no matter how Congress chooses to raise taxes, if we follow that, we will face the largest tax increase in American history both in nominal and real terms. Moreover, in many ways PAYGO has shown itself to be a farce. In January, when the new majority instituted PAYGO, the Congressional Budget Office estimated that revenues in fiscal year 2007 would total $2.542 trillion. Actual revenues for 2007 turned out to be $26 billion higher than that. Does the majority plan to return these excess receipts to the taxpayer? No. It's just soaked up by more spending. Similarly, in January of 2007, the CBO estimated that revenues in fiscal year 2008 would be $2.72 trillion but recently revised that figure upwards by just over $50 billion, almost exactly the same amount that this ``AMT'' costs. Does the majority plan to return this money to the taxpayers, or maybe even credit that against the higher revenues envisioned by the baseline? No. How about crediting it to the AMT patch? No. They are going to pay for it all over again. As Monday's Wall Street Journal editorial points out, ``PAYGO has been nothing but a confidence game from the very start. PAYGO doesn't apply to domestic discretionary spending. It doesn't restrain spending increases under current law in entitlements like Medicare and Medicaid. Its main goals are to make tax cutting all but impossible while letting Democrats pretend to favor fiscal discipline. The 2003 tax cuts expire in 2010 and PAYGO will make them all but impossible to extend.'' The President and the Senate have made clear that they do not intend to raise taxes to prevent a tax increase. The bill we are considering today only further delays final resolution of this issue, increasing cost to the treasury and increasing confusion for taxpayers and the IRS. I urge defeat of this bill. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. McCRERY. Mr. Speaker, may I inquire as to the time remaining for each side.

Mr. McCRERY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Camp), the ranking member of the Health Subcommittee of the Ways and Means Committee.

Mr. McCRERY. Mr. Speaker, at this time I yield 3 minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Wisconsin, a member of the Ways and Means Committee, Mr. Ryan.

Mr. McCRERY. Mr. Speaker, I yield 2\1/2\ minutes to the distinguished gentleman from Virginia, a respected member of the Ways and Means Committee, Mr. Cantor. (Mr. CANTOR asked and was given permission to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. McCRERY. Mr. Speaker, several of the speakers on the majority side have said that this bill provides tax relief for 23 million middle-class taxpayers. That is simply not correct, at least not in the common sense of that term. If you ask somebody on the street, a taxpayer, if you pay the same amount in taxes this year as you paid last year, is that tax relief? No. They're paying the same in taxes. That's all this bill does. Doesn't give them any relief. If you ask that person on the street, if you pay more in taxes this year than you paid last year, is that a tax increase? Yes. We're trying to prevent 23 million taxpayers from getting a tax increase. We're not giving them tax relief. We're preventing a tax increase. So why on Earth, to prevent that tax increase, should we increase taxes on somebody else? It just doesn't make sense, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Speaker, at this time, to further elucidate that point and others, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Hensarling).

Mr. McCRERY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself so much time as I may consume. Mr. Speaker, some of the Members of the majority who seem to be so sincere about not borrowing any more money are the same people that are voting for appropriations bills that exceed what we spent last year plus inflation. So they don't seem to be worried about borrowing more money to spend on goodness knows what. And they're not suggesting yet that we just wipe out all the deficit and thereby prevent any more borrowing by raising taxes totally to do away with the deficit. So we're just talking about a degree of adding to the debt, little here, little there. If we do it by spending, it's okay. If we let a tax increase take place to get the deficit down, that's okay. Well, I think that pretty well defines one of the differences between the two parties in this House. We don't want to increase taxes to balance the budget. We'd rather reduce spending. We'd rather hold the line on spending, nondefense discretionary at least and nonhomeland security discretionary. We don't want to solve the deficit by increasing taxes; whereas, the majority is content to raise spending to increase the debt, and then the only way they want to address the debt is to increase taxes. That's a pretty clear demarcation, Mr. Speaker, of the philosophies of the two parties, and it's become quite apparent as this year has progressed. Fortunately, the majority, which was then the minority, voted with us the last time we had a freestanding AMT patch, with no pay-for. The now-majority who was there then voted overwhelming with us to do exactly what we're suggesting we now do and what the other body has already passed. Mr. Speaker, that's the clear resolution of this problem. I beg the majority, let's don't delay this anymore. Don't cost the taxpayers anymore. Don't make the IRS send another set of forms to the printer. Don't delay the refunds of millions, maybe as many as 50 million taxpayers. That wouldn't be right for our inaction. So let's get this off the floor. I don't have any more speakers. Let's vote, get this done, and then we can get on to really solving the problem. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. McCRERY. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman from Oregon bringing up the fact that President Clinton vetoed the repeal of the AMT back in 1999 when we were in the majority. We did indeed repeal the AMT, only to have that vetoed by President Clinton. However, the gentleman went on to say that for the last few years we did nothing and accepted all the revenues. That's simply not the case. We put a patch on the AMT every year, just like we're proposing to do this year. The President's budget does not assume the revenues from the AMT increase in this fiscal year. His budget proposes a 1-year patch with no pay-for.

Mr. McCRERY. I yield to the gentleman from Oregon.

Mr. McCRERY. Not for the year 2007, which is the object of the legislation before us. Reclaiming my time, yes, this legislation deals with tax year 2007. If we do nothing, the AMT goes into effect for tax year 2007. The President's budget says for tax year 2007 there should be a patch, a freeze on the AMT so that it doesn't affect additional taxpayers, and he does not call for the revenues in his budget. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. McCRERY. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume. The gentleman on the Ways and Means Committee who just spoke claimed that I was being disingenuous. I'm sorry if my remarks were interpreted as being disingenuous. I don't mean to be. I was simply trying to stick to the substance of the legislation before us, which deals with the AMT as it applies to tax year 2007. And with respect to that tax year, the President's budget simply does not, as has been suggested by some Members on the other side, assume revenues from an increase in the AMT. It simply doesn't. Now, the gentleman is correct, and I would love to debate this at the appropriate time, but the gentleman from New Jersey is certainly correct that from 2008 to 2017, the President's budget does, indeed, assume revenues from an increase in the AMT. However, the President's budget also assumes making permanent the tax cuts of 2001 and 2003. So you have to weigh all that together, and when you do, you get a fairly level percent of GDP, around 18.5 percent of GDP, coming into the government in the form of revenues. Under the majority's PAYGO rules, if continued to be applied, and I hope they're not, we would see revenues as a percent of GDP rise by 2017 to 20.1 percent of GDP. So there's a big difference between the PAYGO rules of the majority and what the President has proposed. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. McCRERY. Mr. Speaker, I object to the vote on the ground that a quorum is not present and make the point of order that a quorum is not present.

Mr. McCRERY. Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

Mr. McCRERY. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?

Mr. McCRERY. I thank the gentleman. The gentleman likewise is accurate in his remarks, very cleverly so.

Mr. McCRERY. Yes, sir, it is. But the fact is the most recent budget submitted by the President for this taxable year, 2007, does not, in fact, assume the revenues from an increase in the AMT.

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

Mr. McCRERY. Mr. Speaker, I offer a motion to recommit.

Jim McCrery

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