Ron Kind: “I thank my friend for yielding me this time. Mr. Speaker, I am not quite sure if I have been living in a parallel…”

“I thank my friend for yielding me this time. Mr. Speaker, I am not quite sure if I have been living in a parallel universe over the last few years, but I thought there was genuine concern in this body about getting a grip on our budget deficits, about trying to get our fiscal house put back in order. Yet here we are, in the eleventh hour, before they cut us loose for the fall campaign season, and we have another bill pending before this body that costs $573 billion--with a B--with not a penny of offset, with not a dime of it paid for. Then people wonder where these budget deficits come from. What is unfortunate is some of the policy proposals in this legislation I actually support. We have got five bills coming out of the Ways and Means Committee with some permanent changes to the Tax Code that I happen to agree with, whether it is the R&D--research and development--tax credit; the 179 expensing; the S Corp Modernization bill, which is a bill that I and my friend from Washington State (Mr. Reichert) introduced earlier this year to help with the S corporation businesses in this country; the bonus depreciation; and the repeal of the medical device tax--again, legislation that I and my friend from Minnesota, Erik Paulsen, had introduced because we didn't think it was a good idea for us to be taxing our domestic medical device manufacturers, especially on a pre-revenue basis.…”