Rich Neal: “I regret that I have to speak out against this tax bill. That regret comes from the fact that it has been put together…”

“I regret that I have to speak out against this tax bill. That regret comes from the fact that it has been put together in a very clever manner. For me, it cloaks a number of very good provisions of secondary importance, with some more important items that are simply bad policy. I have generally found that when you are weighing all the items in a tax bill, you have to be particularly sensitive to bad policy because once a provision gets into the tax code, you can rarely get it out. On the other hand, the good items will resurface again in the next bill, either during the next few days or next year. I like very much the 100 percent deduction for the self-employed, a large number of the pension provisions, the housing provisions especially the immediate increase in the low income housing tax credit and the private activity bond cap for first time buyers, and the insurance provisions, among many other provisions. Nevertheless, there is bad policy contained in a number of items of the bill that will have an adverse impact on average Americans.”