Rob Portman: “I think we have seen why this effort today is more politics than it is practical. We are now talking about Iraq. We have…”

“I think we have seen why this effort today is more politics than it is practical. We are now talking about Iraq. We have loaded this bill up with Iraq, and somehow that is going to get through the Senate. The reality is we have about 160 pages of new provisions here that have not been through the Committee on Ways and Means process, have not been reported out of the Senate Finance Committee; and they are, therefore, going to drag down all of the other good legislation in the underlying bill. We are talking about the substitute for good legislation. The gentleman from Washington has talked about the child credit. Here is the reality. If we really want the child credit to get resolved, to be sure we were giving fair and balanced relief to families with kids, Members would not tack it onto this, raising every issue from inversions to Iraq. Members would instead want to make that a streamlined process, as we did here in the House recently where we said we ought to be able to provide people who do not have Federal income tax liability with a little help, more help than we are already giving them because all those families already get help, thanks to Republicans, because in 2001 we passed tax legislation that for the first time ever, unlike what the Democrats did for the previous 40-plus years when they controlled this place, we provided tax credits that were refundable to people who do not pay Federal income taxes.”