My closing comments on the Senate Tax bill
Transcript:
“Mr. President. I too wanted to thank Senator Rest for running a very good committee. Well-run. Very respectful. Lots of important conversations, where all views were valued.
“And quite frankly there’s a large number of good things in this tax bill. A number of them were ones that were part of that conference committee report agreed to with the House; things that have broad bipartisan support: The historic tax credit. The angel investor tax credit. The child tax credit. Certainly a great disappointment that we did not see a full elimination of social security income tax, but a step in the right direction there.
“And there are also a couple new things that I think were critical: I’m very supportive of allowing the citizens of Rochester the opportunity to vote on a potential local sales tax. Senator Rest also included the New Market Tax Credit, which is really Innovative and important in actually bringing that Economic Development to all corners of our state — particularly those census tracks that have not seen the economics and the economic value of industry.
“And so those things are incredibly, incredibly helpful, and I particularly like the public safety Aid. Certainly that has never been more important than it is right now. And I could go on and talk about a number of those things.
“And I would be remiss if I did not thank Senator rest for tasking Senator Hauschild and I to go through all those local sales taxes. I believe it’s a great format for Tax Committees in the future to do that. All of those were so well vetted because of the distribution of Labor that she tasked Senator Hauschild and I with, so I am incredibly thankful for that.
“But there’s a couple of really big Clunkers in this bill that I’m wrestling with, with trying to get my mind around. It is hard to comprehend, members, it is hard to comprehend starting this session with a $19 billion dollar surplus and ending up with over a billion dollars $1.2 billion dollars of tax increases — the tax itself is problematic as we’ve discussed so much.
“And my hope is as things progress through conference committee that this bill will get better. We do want to keep all of the good parts, but it seems that there’s some priorities somewhere along the line that should cause us to not increase taxes by over a billion dollars — $1.2 billion at least, just in that one mandatory worldwide reporting requirement, which no one else in the world is doing.
“So it’s it’s a wrestle to wrestle through this, but there’s no doubt that it was a very well-run committee and I do tip my hat to all of the staff on both sides of the aisle and nonpartisan staff they did a phenomenal job and the tax committee is the place to be. Thank you.”
