Charles Rangel: “as our colleagues know, we passed overwhelmingly the minimum wage bill. But it got into trouble in the Senate as they…”

“as our colleagues know, we passed overwhelmingly the minimum wage bill. But it got into trouble in the Senate as they attempted to attach an $8.2 billion tax cut. I shared the problem that we faced with Mr. McCrery, and we thought that small business certainly did deserve some assistance, with or without the minimum wage bill. And we talked, and Mr. McCrery said, well, if we are going to have a bill, are we going to pay for it? And let's select what we thought would be the best interests of small businesses in view of this dialogue that we had with the Senate. Our staffs got together, gave us several options, and we agreed that we would increase and extend the small business expense, increase the work opportunity tax credit to include veterans and disabled veterans, protect the current benefit of the FICA tip credit, allow small businesses to use the work opportunity tax credit, and to enjoy the alternative, to exclude alternative minimum tax, and to simplify the tax filing system for businesses that are owned jointly by husband and wife. We then tried to figure a way to pay for it. And what we agreed to is to make certain that the capital gains tax cut that was dramatically made lower for people in low income, that we would prevent people from transferring the capital stock to their kids who have little or no income and enjoy a benefit that was designed to assist low-income people.”