By USDR
This was a first.
For the past two years Republicans on the House Ways & Means Committee have been making a compelling case to make permanent some the 50 plus temporary tax relief provisions that expired earlier this year – like the Research & Development tax credit. It’s vitally important to incentivize companies to create good paying research jobs here in America rather than overseas.
After months of negotiations with the Democratic leader of the Senate, Harry Reid, we agreed on a $450 billion tax relief measure that, among other things, makes permanent the R & D credit, the state and local sales tax deduction so important to families in Texas, and a small business tax relief measure that allows them to quickly write-off from their taxes investments in equipment and software – a key to creating local jobs.
It was a bi-partisan jobs measure, a rare occurrence in Congress.
Yet out of the blue, without seeing the proposal, President Obama quickly issued a veto threat against it, rebuking the Democratic leader of the Senate and killing the agreement.
For a President who rails against outsourcing American jobs to other countries, his veto threat ensures more research & development jobs are shipped overseas where taxes are lower and there are more incentives for companies to create research facilities. That’s hypocritical.
The reason the White House gave for this jobs-killing action that also slapped the faces of Senators from his own party? The President wanted made permanent two stimulus-era tax credits which don’t even expire until 2017. Federal auditors have determined that for the first program, one of every four dollars is paid out to fraudulent applicants; the second is a child tax credit that pays out billions of dollars to ineligible applicants for children who don’t exist or who don’t even live in the U.S.
Both are ripe for even more fraud and abuse due to the millions of illegal immigrants granted amnesty recently by the President.
I’ve always known the President won’t hesitate to kill job-creating proposals when Republicans make them. This is a first when he kills proposals that Democrat leaders also support. It’s millions of Americans who are still looking for full-time jobs that get hurt.
* * *
The Republican House of Representatives moved swiftly to restore the Constitution’s checks and balances by prohibiting the President’s unprecedented and troubling executive amnesty.
The measure, which I strongly support, prohibits the White House or its agencies from offering deportation exemptions or work permits to large classes of illegal immigrants.
The Constitution is explicit on this issue: Congress establishes the rules for immigration and the President enforces them. As widely reported, President Obama has publicly admitted this almost two dozen times in recent years.
The Democratically-controlled Senate is expected to bury the House prohibition, as it has with more than 380 bills sent to them by the House. So, some have called the measure ‘symbolic’.
I never believe that exercising my constitutional responsibility and fighting on behalf of my constituents to right the wrong actions of this White House is symbolic merely because Harry Reid refuses to allow the Senate to vote on it. That’s cowardly.
In a few short weeks the American people will have a Senate that actually votes on issues and tries to find solutions. It’s long overdue.
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