Don Nickles: “I have great respect and esteem for my neighbor from Arkansas, but this is an amendment that would increase taxes by $60…”

“I have great respect and esteem for my neighbor from Arkansas, but this is an amendment that would increase taxes by $60 billion. I think we want to send out a clarion call to taxpayers: Look out. Our good friends on the Democrat side of the aisle are after you. They are coming. They are coming after your pocketbooks. We just considered an amendment from our colleague from Iowa for $39 billion. The Senator from California, Mrs. Boxer, offered an amendment for $24 billion, and there are a lot of other tax increases in a lot of other amendments that I guess we will discuss. The $60 billion tax increase that Senator Lincoln is offering proposes to close loopholes. My colleague from Arkansas is on the Finance Committee. We mark up tax bills all the time. The Senator should introduce her amendment to close the loopholes. As soon as I found out about the leasing provision, I started talking about we need to repeal it. The chairman of the Finance Committee put that in the FSC/ETI bill. We had that bill on the Senate floor, and it will be back in a week. We can make that law. There are other loopholes that need to be closed, many of which the chairman of the Finance Committee has in that bill, supported by Senator Grassley and Senator Baucus and many of us on the committee, most of those in a very bipartisan way. Now a lot of that is used to pay for the JOBS bill that Senator Grassley and Senator Baucus are trying to pass.”