Political Quotes

“Had we had an opportunity to try to amend this bill that this rule provides for, I would have offered an amendment to lift the income tax on the unemployment compensation that many people have been receiving and, nevertheless, have to pay tax on it. Because of a quirk in the law of 1986, those unemployment benefits, the ones which we are discussing here today, are taxable. My amendment to this rule would have provided for repealing the tax and make it retroactive through the year 2001. Why? Because in 2001, we began to see a creep-up of unemployment compensation claims as a result of the layoffs that were occurring. And that became exacerbated on September 11 and, what followed, because even more people, by the exigencies of what happened there, applied for unemployment compensation. So what I plan to do is to entice all of my colleagues to get on a bill that we have introduced to reduce and to eliminate the taxes on unemployment compensation. This has an additional double benefit. If we remove the income taxes from the unemployment compensation benefits back to 2001, it constitutes a tax cut. That is an absolute tax cut in the image of what the President needs to stimulate the economy, because it will be cash remaining in people's pockets, especially those who are unemployed and are on unemployment compensation. Secondly, it is the fair and right thing to do.”