James Oberstar: “Mr. Speaker, this is a very nostalgic moment for me. My late wife, Jo, and I started our family with adoption. We…”

“Mr. Speaker, this is a very nostalgic moment for me. My late wife, Jo, and I started our family with adoption. We brought Ted into our family in April of 1968; and there followed Noelle and Annie and Monica, and now grandchildren, granddaughters. It would not have been possible without adoption. I started thinking about what we were able to do, how we were able to afford the cost of adoption. But there are many others who could not. And in 1977, I introduced what then was recognized as the very first bill to provide financial assistance for adoption, a modest $1,500 tax deduction. Well, it was rejected by Treasury as costing too much; Treasury could not afford it. There was not really much of a movement across this country for adoption in those days. So I began to work to build a consensus. With the help of Members on both sides of the aisle, it is remarkable how I found support... Over time, we built a consensus and a bipartisan momentum until in 1996, 20 years later, legislation was enacted to provide, not a tax deduction, but a much more valuable $5,000 tax credit.”