Jim McDermott

Mr. Chairman, I want to thank you for allowing me to participate in this and I will use my time to ask for unanimous consent...

We need to provide the IRS with more tools to combat identity theft today.

I continue to have serious concerns about the effects of recent budget cuts on taxpayers and the agency's ability to serve them.

I commend the Internal Revenue Service for identifying and preventing over $14 billion in fraudulent tax refunds last year.

That is not competition. That is a joke. You know it and I know it.

We are marking time in place while many seniors are being stopped at the door because they are under Medicare.

I admire what you are doing.

The trustees just said that accountable CARE Act lengthens the life of Medicare by 8 years.

I have never heard anybody say please, please, go to a voucher system, do away with my defined benefit program.

This provision provides critical tax relief to struggling homeowners that are lucky enough to get their lender to agree to principal reduction.

Certainly, it is a critical component of our Tax Code, and making this hearing on expiring tax provisions is really in my view long overdue because businesses want to know what is going on, and a lot of people want to know.

More than 800,000 Washingtonians alone would be subject to this unequal treatment if the deduction is not extended.

It is time for it to be permanent, but here we are again.

This provision brings tax equity to taxpayers living in states with no income tax.

I think that is probably the most important thing.

Seven thousand dollars. It is practically nothing.

In terms of benefit levels, Washington is a little bit more generous.

I think it is a huge mistake, sir.

The funding problem was not excessive benefit outlays that the States were responsible for, but the failure of taxes to bring the trust funds back to previous balances.

The problems that States have had has not been because they increased benefits, but because they reduced the rate that they were charging employers.

What leverage do we have in terms of forcing the States to pay their debts to the Federal Government?

Do you think you would have lost any of them if you did not respond to that request?

Was there anything besides staff morale involved in that decision?

I think that must be because they think that there is some inherent value in it, that it is the right thing to do.

So it is really preserving the private sector in the health care issue?