Jeb Hensarling: “Mr. Speaker, since coming to Congress, I have heard a number of bad ideas, but I cannot think of one worse than raising…”

“Mr. Speaker, since coming to Congress, I have heard a number of bad ideas, but I cannot think of one worse than raising taxes on small businesses in America, the job-creating machine in America. Let me just give you one example of why this is such a bad idea. Recently I was in Jacksonville, Texas touring a plant, Jacksonville Industries, a zinc and aluminum die cast business. Because of competitive pressures, they were considering laying off two of the 22 workers that they had. But thanks to President Bush's economic growth program that we passed in this House, that tax relief for that small business enabled them to buy a new piece of machinery, I could not tell you what its name is, I could not tell you what it does, it is big, it makes a lot of noise, but most importantly, it makes them more efficient. And instead of having to lay off two people, they hired three new workers in just one plant in one small town in Texas, thanks to tax relief. That is five people who could have been on welfare, five people that could have been on unemployment. But instead it is five people with good, productive, tax-paying jobs. Mr. Speaker, we have a choice today. We can choose to continue the historic economic growth we have seen over the past year or we can turn back the clock to recession and stagnant growth. We can choose to keep creating hundreds of thousands of new jobs or we can send Americans back to the unemployment line.”