American Research and Competitiveness Act of 2015

Floor Speech

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Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, this is really simple. We have had the research and development tax credit in law since 1981. It has periodic expirations in it. Every time the law expires, we renew the law. Why? Because we think this is a good policy, and on a bipartisan basis our votes have always reflected that.

We believe that since we renew this specifically 1 year at a time, it does not do very well in giving businesses the time to plan and the ability to consider long-term investments. They need certainty. One of the problems plaguing this economy is the lack of certainty. So what this bill does is it makes it permanent. This is something that we think ought to be a permanent feature of our Tax Code.

Mr. Speaker, one of the arguments you are going to hear is, well, this has to be paid for. I want people to understand what that means when people say that. They are saying that to keep taxes where they are, we need to go raise them on other people. To put it another way, the minority is telling us they want a permanent extension of tax credits from the stimulus bill which was temporary, but they are saying if we make permanent provisions that have bipartisan support that are extended on an annual basis, if we make them permanent, all of a sudden we have to go raise taxes on some other hard-working Americans just to keep these taxes in place.

I think that is incorrect. We don't think it jibes with reality. More importantly, we think it is very important, to help unleash job creation, to keep research and development jobs in America, that we make the research and development tax credit permanent.

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