On the recordJune 23, 2010
We recently--in fact, just in the last day--sent a letter to the Internal Revenue Service to ask them to give a special exemption for taxes on the money of all the people who are being harmed economically by this disastrous oil spill. They won't have to pay taxes on the money they get, which is absolutely fair. We saw that happen. The Internal Revenue Service was going to tax the recipients money that they received in Hurricane Katrina, as you know, in your own home city there in New Orleans. And Congress had to act to say to the Internal Revenue Service, Don't tax that money. But I wrote the Internal Revenue Service and said, Please give a special exemption to all those businesses and individuals that have been harmed. And it's absolutely critical because these people have been out of work, many of them for 2 months now. They're struggling just to make ends meet.
