Jon Kyl: “this amendment simply has us do something we have already done. We passed, I believe, unanimously some provisions to…”

“this amendment simply has us do something we have already done. We passed, I believe, unanimously some provisions to help small businesses pay for the minimum wage increase. We all did that. The bill went over to the House of Representatives. You will recall they attached the minimum wage bill to the Iraq supplemental, and they dropped out these tax provisions. This amendment simply reinstates the same tax provisions for small businesses in three areas: leasehold and restaurant depreciation, extending them from the end of this year through 2008; new restaurant construction, a 15-year depreciation period; owner-occupied retail, a 15-year depreciation period--all just through the end of the year 2008. As to the first one, it has to be done this year because it expires at the end of this year. As I said, we adopted this. We checked the record. I think it was by unanimous consent. In any event, I believe it was unanimous. We already passed it. Here is the irony. The underlying bill that the SCHIP bill has been attached to is that minimum wage bill. So to the argument that this is not the right bill, I would say, actually, this is not the right bill for SCHIP, but it is the right bill for this amendment. So I hope we can repeat what we have already done and adopt this small business relief.”