Rob Portman: “just looking at the motion to instruct, I find it interesting that the other side is instructing the conferees to…”

“just looking at the motion to instruct, I find it interesting that the other side is instructing the conferees to include provisions that were not in the Democratic substitute. I have the Democratic substitute in front of me. There is a requirement twice here that the conference report shall include increasing the per child tax credit, for instance, which was not in the Democratic substitute. We just heard that we need to add all of these things, and yet when the Democrats offered their own tax bill, it was not included. I see a permanent extension of the research credit must be included. That is an instruction to the conferees, yet the Democrats have no research and development tax credit in their plan. There is a discussion here of the AMT saying we shall adjust the current law AMT tax so it does not disallow benefits. That is in the House-passed bill in conference. That is something that this House took up as part of the legislation. It has a number of provisions here saying we must be sure that the revenue laws and associated debt service costs do not exceed Social Security and Medicare in the HI Trust Fund. That is included in our budget resolution and included in the House-passed version. And as the chairman said in the Senate-passed bill today, it does not in fact do that. Mr. Speaker, I would make the suggestion that the motion to instruct is not consistent with the Democrat's own tax plan that they came forward with.”