Political Quotes

“I thank my colleague. We are good friends and I know his heart is in the right place. I would just make a couple of quick points before I get into a little bit of the substance, and I will be brief. The reason this extender has special weight and deserves being brought up today is the following: Most of the tax extenders--and I certainly support a large number of them--can be put into law retroactively with little harm done. Since most of them affect people's tax returns in 2015 if the law is changed, say, January or February of 2014, it doesn't affect this because the tax deduction would actually be filed before April 2015. The one problem with the mass transit benefit is it is much harder to make retroactive. People try and we tried last year. We did it retroactively. But since the benefit goes each month to the commuter from his or her employer, retroactivity doesn't work quite as well. That is why I felt it was important to try to get this passed now, so perhaps when the House returned immediately--there is good bipartisan support for this in the House support as well--they might enact it and we would not have to wait for the Finance Committee to go through a large number of other tax extenders hearings and whatever, because the longer it is retroactive, the harder it is. I certainly appreciate my colleague's objection. I am going to fight very hard to try to get this done in January when we return.…”