Max Baucus: “The Thune amendment has its heart in the right place. It is trying to help small businesses and provide jobs. But…”

“The Thune amendment has its heart in the right place. It is trying to help small businesses and provide jobs. But, frankly, it has two very significant problems. Therefore, I urge it not be adopted. First, it makes permanent many provisions of the tax law that actually should be considered in tax reform. This is not the place to be writing tax reform. Our code is riddled with inconsistencies. Many of the provisions in the code fit together. Some don't. There are loopholes. There is a lot of overhaul needed, if we are going to have significant tax reform. We should address those issues at the right time and the right place but not here. It does not make sense to make certain provisions in the Tax Code permanent. The second flaw is, to pay for his provisions, Senator Thune uses excess stimulus funds, funds out of the Recovery Act. The CBO says the Recovery Act is working well. Last month CBO issued its report on the effects of the Recovery Act in the fourth quarter. In that report, CBO said: CBO estimates that in the fourth quarter of calendar year 2009, the [Recovery Act] added between 1 million and 12.1 million to the number of workers employed in the United States, and it increased the number of full-time-equivalent jobs by between 1.4 million and 3 million. They say the Recovery Act created or saved between 1 and 3 million jobs.”