Providing for the Expenses of Certain Committees of the House of Representatives in the 113th Congress

Floor Speech

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Mr. COTTON. I've listened to this debate. It's primarily about the amount of money we spend on our committees here in the House. Taxes have just been inserted into it, and I have to respond to the comment about corporate taxes or tax breaks for corporate jets. It's an easy target. It's something the Democrats have repeatedly targeted in their budget resolution, something the President proposed to offset sequestration. And of course, the wealthy, with their big fancy corporate jets or corporate executives with their jets are easy targets.

But there is a lot of collateral damage any time this issue comes up. We forget about the people who fly those planes, the people who clean the planes, the people who fuel the planes, the people who run the facilities where those planes are hangared, the people who manage the flight operations, the people who manufacture those planes, which is, I would point out, the number one export industry in the State of Arkansas.

Much like in 1990 when the budget deal targeted the yacht industry in New England for a special luxury tax, it didn't raise the revenue that was projected. It did devastate that industry, leading to catastrophic layoffs, and resulted in the repeal of that measure within just a matter of months after it passed.

So while I appreciate the Democrats' desire to raise taxes every few months, I think that our spending crisis, or our debt crisis, is driven by spending, and we should be careful about singling out specific industries that provide good, high-paying jobs to hardworking Americans.

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