Steve Cohen: “Thank you, Mr. Graves. I appreciate your yielding time and I appreciate your bringing this amendment. I rise in strong…”

“Thank you, Mr. Graves. I appreciate your yielding time and I appreciate your bringing this amendment. I rise in strong support of the concept in the amendment. Although I know it's going to be withdrawn, the concept is important, and we need to address this issue in this Congress. This amendment would address the going crisis of discriminatory taxes placed on rental car transactions. I don't need to tell my colleagues how frustrating it is to go rent a car and see huge taxes on your bill, taxes put on your bill by legislative bodies that you don't get a right to vote on most of the time and that you don't get to vote on. It's a simple thing for people to do. It's cheap taxes from State and local officials to let tourists pay their taxes for their sports arenas and other facilities. ``Don't tax me; don't tax thee; tax that guy behind that tree.'' That is not the kind of tax philosophy we should encourage, and we should make our State and local officials do taxation in the proper manner which is supposed to be with either property taxes or sales taxes or income taxes but not these types of taxes that discriminate. And my jurisdictions have done as well, but it doesn't make it right. Rental car taxes target air travelers, but they also hurt low-income people who don't own cars and must rent instead. The 1994 FAA reauthorization bill included a provision to prevent taxes targeting air travelers to pay for projects that have nothing to do with air traffic.…”