Dave Camp: “It's tough to see this bill either as a small business bill or as a jobs bill, and, specifically, I have three concerns…”

“It's tough to see this bill either as a small business bill or as a jobs bill, and, specifically, I have three concerns: One, it raises taxes on employers during a recession, making it tougher for Americans to find needed work. Two, roughly 80 percent of the so-called tax relief in the bill is dedicated to State and local governments. Small governments are not small businesses, and they do not create the kind of private sector jobs that we need. Three, the limited and very narrow tax provisions, even if well-intentioned, will not do enough to help employers create jobs. Under this bill, American jobs will be taxed. That's the simple truth regarding the provision limiting treaty benefits for certain deductible payments. This is very similar to a provision offered previously by the gentleman from Texas (Mr. Doggett) and accounts for about 40 percent of the $19.4 billion in tax increases in the bill. There's never a good time to raise taxes on employers and American workers, but given the continued weakness in the economy, now may be the worst time. Data from the Department of Labor confirms that 48 States have lost jobs since the Democrats' stimulus bill passed, 3.3 million jobs have been eliminated since the Democrat stimulus bill passed, and a record 16 million Americans are out of work.”