Jim Matheson: “Mr. Paulsen, if it's okay, I would like to take one more opportunity to offer a few comments on this. I wanted to make…”

“Mr. Paulsen, if it's okay, I would like to take one more opportunity to offer a few comments on this. I wanted to make sure my colleagues on this side had a chance to speak. But I think there are a couple other points that ought to be made. This is an excise tax that's being assessed on an industry that is, by any imagination, one of these American success stories. This is an American-based industry where innovation and hard work have created this opportunity for great value for this generation. It's created great jobs, and it's also enhanced the quality of health care in this country for all of us. This is an industry we should embrace, we should be proud of. It's a poster child for American innovation. And isn't it ironic that here in the policy world, we now have a policy put in place where we say, well, let's take this industry and let's apply a special tax to it. And when this was put in the ObamaCare bill, it wasn't put in for any particular policy reason associated with this industry. It was put in to raise revenue, pure and simple. It wasn't put in for any other reason. {time} 2100 Why we would single out this industry, to me it doesn't make sense. This is an industry that has a few very large companies in it and a number of smaller companies that are also across-the-board innovators. And when you tax, as a couple of the previous speakers have said, not profits, but when you tax sales revenue, you know, if you're a start-up company, you don't have a profit.…”