Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, first, I want to make mention to the fine ranking member of the committee that we did reach out, certainly, to as many staff on the Democrat side as we possibly could. Perhaps we could have done a little bit better job of that, but I do want to make mention that we did make that effort--a point duly noted, though--and we will follow up multiple times the next time I have a bill that I think the gentleman would be interested in. Mr. Speaker, I filed H.R. 5015, the Combat-Injured Veterans Tax Fairness Act, after learning that nearly 14,000 veterans from all 50 States and the District of Columbia who suffered service-ending, combat-related injuries never received the full amount of their severance payment because taxes were wrongly withheld. Let me repeat that: nearly 14,000 veterans did not receive the money to which they were entitled because of a taxing error made by the Federal Government. Now, in case you are wondering how this error occurred, here is some background: the Internal Revenue Code excludes recurring disability payments from taxable income for personal injuries or sickness resulting from active service in our Armed Forces. In 1991, a Federal district court case, St. Clair v. United States, determined that one- time lump-sum disability severance payments received for injuries resulting from active service should be excluded from taxable income as well.…”