Mitch Landrieu: “I say for the benefit of the people in Louisiana, we do not understand how we can give our tax credits to everybody but…”

“I say for the benefit of the people in Louisiana, we do not understand how we can give our tax credits to everybody but the Guard and Reserve. We can give out help to everybody except those Federal employees who take off one uniform and put on another, leave their homes for 6 months to a year, sometimes longer, and we expect them to take a cut in pay when we are giving tax credits to people who are not fighting. If I could conclude on this one issue which really pours salt into the wound, when people say, Senator, we could not afford it, we actually found a way to pay for it. We said we should pay for it by making people who are right now evading U.S. taxes because they have made so much money in America because our troops have put their life on the line to protect the way of life which allows business people to make a lot of money in America, these business people who have made a lot of money because of what these men and women are doing in the Armed Forces, these business people are now deciding they are paying too much in tax, so they go to another country. They do not want to pay their taxes. So we said let's make those folks pay their taxes and use those proceeds to pay for tax relief for the men and women in the military. We were told we cannot do that. We cannot possibly make people who owe taxes to America pay their taxes so that we can pay the men and women in uniform and give them a tax cut. I hope we will change our policy because it is wrong.”