Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2016

Floor Speech

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Mr. REID. Madam President, in Section 303 of the House amendment No. 1 to the Senate amendment to H.R. 2029, the text of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2016, the section 48 Investment Tax Credit, 26 U.S.C. section 48, is extended for 5 years, beginning on January 1, 2017, and phased down to 26 percent in 2020 and 22 percent in 2021. Section 303 inadvertently only extends the credit for solar energy technologies, rather than all of the technologies currently eligible to receive the credit.

The intention of the agreement that I reached with the majority leader was to extend the section 48 Investment Tax Credit for all of the eligible technologies for 5 years and to treat each technology eligible for a 30 percent credit the same with respect to a phase down in the years 2020 and 2021. The permanent 10 percent credit for eligible technologies under section 48 will remain in place.

The majority leader and I hope to address this early next year in an appropriate legislative vehicle.

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Mr. REID. I associate myself with the comments of the Senator from Ohio, Mr. Brown. If it turns out to be in the best interest of borrowers, the economy or to protect taxpayers, the next administration could elect to end the conservatorship on January 2, 2018. This is the view of the Treasury Department as well. I would like to submit a letter written to me on this issue that states that the provision binds the Treasury only until January 1, 2018, and has no effect after that.

The agreement for this language to be included in the omnibus was that the prohibition would sunset after 2 years and not create a perpetual conservatorship. As then-Secretary Paulson described, conservatorship was meant to be a ``time out'' not an indefinite state of being.

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