Ron Kind: “I thank my friend for yielding me this time. Mr. Speaker, I have a great deal of respect and admiration for the chairman…”

“I thank my friend for yielding me this time. Mr. Speaker, I have a great deal of respect and admiration for the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, my friend from Michigan. I hope his solution here today, given the dysfunction that we have seen in the process coming out of this Congress in recent years, is not just to come forward with a series of permanent changes to the U.S. Tax Code without paying for any of it and exploding our national debt for future generations to have to grapple with, but unfortunately, that has been the trend in the Ways and Means Committee over the last couple of months. I also want to commend the work that the gentlewoman from Tennessee (Mrs. Black) has done with the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Danny K. Davis) in putting together this bipartisan bill. I am all for simplification of the Tax Code. I am all for streamlining these tax credits to make it easier for students and their families to better afford higher education. I am all for finding a bipartisan path forward to make sure that no student is left behind, that those doors of educational opportunity are there and open for all Americans, but we ought to do that the right way, not the wrong way. Unfortunately, the bill here before us today is the wrong way to approach the issue.…”