Paul Ryan: “why are we here? We're here because it's Tax Day and the majority decided they had to have a tax bill to come to the…”

“why are we here? We're here because it's Tax Day and the majority decided they had to have a tax bill to come to the floor to pass on Tax Day. There are some good provisions in this bill. I want to talk about one provision that is not a good provision. That's what we call HSA substantiation. What that basically means is without a single hearing, the majority wants to bring these new red-taped complicated rules to health savings accounts so that every time somebody goes and makes a health care purchase that's under the deductible, they have to first get permission from their banker or from the government before they do it. That's essentially what substantiation does. Now, we've heard from banks, from the credit unions, from the NFIB and the small businesses. They're all saying, we're not going to do it anymore. We're not going to offer HSAs to our clients. Madam Speaker, the key with health savings accounts is that people can save tax free for their out-of-pocket health care savings. Why on earth would we want to bring a bill to the floor which we know will reduce the use of health savings accounts? The goal of this Congress ought to be to make health care more accessible and more affordable. Unfortunately, this bill goes in the wrong direction. So we want to inflict all of this red tape that we don't inflict on individual retirement accounts or on home equity lines of credits on this, and this will make it harder for people to save tax free for health care.”