Kevin Brady: “it is, I think, a terrible mistake to leave out tax relief for dividends. These are the usually small amounts of money…”

“it is, I think, a terrible mistake to leave out tax relief for dividends. These are the usually small amounts of money that go to people, many seniors, who have invested in a company; and these are the dividends that help ease their retirement. Back a few years ago, we saw a number of Wall Street companies go under, the Enrons, the WorldComs, all those dot-com technology companies. They had big stock prices. They had great pieces of paper saying they were wonderful companies, but the fact of the matter is they were built on thin air. What we did under this legislation is we said to the companies, prove that you have a solid profit-and-loss statement, you have real assets, show us the money; pay it out in dividends, we will lower the cost, lower the taxes on those dividends. Since we created this tax legislation, now Fortune 500 companies, one out of four that did not provide dividends in the past, are now providing real money to real people who have invested in them. In other words, we have changed the culture from what is good this quarter and what is good for my stock price to what is the best long term, real growth, solid businesses in America. We have changed the culture of Wall Street because of this dividend tax relief. It is very important we not go back to the bad old days of high stock prices but built on thin air.…”