is a provision that permits employers to completely write off investments and qualifying capital expenditures in the year of purchase rather than over time. with the economy continuing to struggle, too many americans are still looking for work. it's provisions like this that can help employers of all sizes, small, large, invest in new equipment and machinery and grow their businesses and more importantly create jobs. would i note this provision in the house has been supported by the president and it maintains strong support for many employers and businesses. so why don't we start on this discussion. senator baucus. >> i'll be -- i'll defer, frankly, to the senator. i'll follow him. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i understand we have a short time frame so i'll try to be very brief. this hopefully is one of the provisions on which we will be able to develop early and strong support and consensus. as you've already indicated, chairman camp, a number of times during the past decade congress has responded to difficult economic times but allowing

capital formation to be given a strong boost through changing the depreciation provisions in our tax code, allowing small businesses in particular but business to depreciate on a more rapid basis their investments in equipment and machinery that will enable them not only to maintain their production but to grow and develop more jobs. as -- just as a reminder, the current law, which was developed during the december 2010 compromises enacted 100% bonus depreciation for the year 2011 and then a 50% bonus depreciation for 2012. and what the house bill does, which is what i'm supporting, what i think we ought to hopefully reach early agreement on, is to extend that 100% bonus depreciation through the entire year of 2012. as you've already indicated, chairman kemp, this is something the president himself has proposed in his american jobs act.

although the senate bill is silent on this issue, i think there has been support expressed by senators on this significantly. this is a boost to the economy. this is one of the win-win times of solutions that we can enact that will help across the board. businesses can invest in more productive capital assets and the promotion and incentivization of capital formation is what we need in our efforts to strengthen our economy and boost the number of jobs that are available. also an october 2010 treasury study estimated that 100% expensing would lower the average cost for capital for new investments by more than 75%. now that is the kind of incentive we need to be providing as congress for the private sector in this country to be able to engage in capital

formation and generate the jobs that we are trying to address. it's also cost effective because the depreciation will ultimately be recovered, allowing businesses to take larger deductions for their expenses now means they will not be taking drawn-out deductions in the future, which means we will ultimately recover most of this. my understanding is that the cost of this proposal, if we look at the cumulative effect through 2022 rather than 2021 to look at what will really be happening as the businesses depreciate their equipment throughout the entire period, the revenue loss drops from $6 billion down to $5 billion. so we will be recovering much -- not all but much of the revenue that is lost by engaging in this provision. we will be allowing a strong boost to capital formation in the economy and we will be generating more jobs through this provision and i would encourage us to quickly agree to it. thank you. colleagues, i think it makes

sense. i don't know the degree to which companies will actually use it. i'm sure they'll use it significantly. we always hear about them, $1 trillion to $2 trillion cash that american companies have and maybe they'll spend some of it with this expensive provision. it's hard to tell. i think that many would. on the other hand, there are some estimates that this provision is used much more when the economy is prosperous, when unemployment is low, when consumers are buying good and companies are hiring, they're making money. the expensing works best of course when the company is profitable and you got taxes to pay. but when the economy is not doing quite as well, when some profit margins aren't as high as they might be, income expensing is not as important, it's not as much bang for the buck as it would have in a very prosperous economy, but it helps and i think we should adopt it. i might add just parenthetically there are estimates from cbo and

other organizations that dollar for dollar the greater bang for the buck is with payroll tax and that's in ui and so forth. it's important, no doubt about it. but there are a few other provisions dollar for dollar that do have greater positive impact on the economy. on the margin. while we're talking about expensing, though, i think it's important for us also to extend the so-called traditional extenders. it's embarrassment, mr. chairman, this country has i think it's 130 of them, they're either one year or 18 months congress continually addresses this question, should we extend these extenders or not. if any american business person, any american thinks about this and wonders whether or not anything's going to be extended next year has got to wonder why in the world aren't they permanent or why aren't they eliminated? why do we always have to go down

this road? say nothing of all the angst and turmoil and frustration it causes members of congress, especially on the tax writing committees. nevertheless they're here and some that are very, very important. which it clearly should be extended. these are growth provisions. these help the economy. the r & d tax credit for example. very, very important to our country's competitiveness and it clearly should be extended. there are others. what about equity? some states have income taxes, other states don't have income taxes. they got sales taxes. it just seems to me that for the same of fairness we should enact the provision where the state said the opposite, you could deduct a sales tax or income tax depending upon your state. that's fair. that's extremely important to

those states where there's no income tax, just sales tax. so people can have that option available. education expenses. my gosh, the number of americans who are suffering trying to meet education costs these days, there are provisions in the code as we all know that very much help americans send their kids to college or the kids themselves go to college. in 2009 there are 2.4 million families received tax relief from one of these extenders, claiming a deduction for higher education. i mentioned the state and local deduction. i just urge, mr. chairman, that we've got to find a way to continue these standards now. we're coming out of recession

and if we suddenly cut them off, we're going to leave a lot of people high and dry but more importantly, they're good policy. i grant that there are some in here that are a little shaky. and maybe we should take them out of the coat. but let's again be smart about this, keep our heads screwed on straight and our feet on the ground and i think that means extending these extenders, unless there are a couple three that we just say, hey, just scrap them, let them fall on the cutting room floor. but most of them should be extended. >> well, thank you. i do want to comment on that. obviously i'm sympathetic to what you have to say about the extenders having worked on them for a number of years and know the importance of so many of them. some are obviously, as you point out, more controversial than others. my view is that these are outside of the scope of conference. we've heard from a number of

speakers today about how we shouldn't be expanding our scope that, we should stay focused on the issues of importance, particularly sgr, payroll and ui. but i would be interested of those few important ones that you've suggested of discussing further with you what you think those are. but do i want to say that there has been a change in the way we deal with these and that our house budget rules now require that all extenders be offset. so we know we've identified the difficulties in terms of trying to find -- we know the difficulties ahead in trying to find ways to pay for the issues at hand and issues that we've identified. so i know that this would further complicate our charge. but i would be interested in discussing further with you what those -- >> mr. chairman, i think that's a good idea. obviously this will set up to a

significant degree tax reform efforts that you and i are undertaking this year, it leads into tax reform, which is critically important. but i think a wiser alternative at this point for to us continue to have discussions on which ones to enact and which not. >> all right. mr. levin. >> thank you, mr. levin. i just want to start by emphasizing a point where i hope we'll eventually have consensus, which is that our focus and priority should be on the three items that were mentioned, extending the payroll tax cut to 160 americans, extend unemployment insurance for folks who are out of work through no fault of their own and, three -- it seems to me the next round of issues, if there are to be other issues, should be those where there's consensus, where we're not slowing down the priority work on focus on the other three. so we just had a conversation on boiler mack rules.

i don't want to get into the substance of it. clearly there was a difference of opinion. concerned that would slow the process down if we failed to meet consensus. with respect to -- i agree with senator crapo. you laid out some of the statistics from the treasury department. it makes sense. there may be some extenders where there can be consensus but i would just put forward this one caveat, which is that we've been focused here on the policy issues and there's the very important question about whether, to what extent we offset some of these things and where we do offset them, how we do it. and so while there's, you know, i think it's easy for all of us to agree that bonusin sentive is a good thing, it may hurt the economy in another place or may have negative effects in other areas. and so, you know, again since we're just focused on half the equation if this is something we

should do, bonus depreciation, i say yes, let's go for it. but i would just qualify with that that again, just circling back with what i said, our focus needs to be on payroll tax cuts and the extent on how to deal with these other issues, slow down those priorities. then i think we may have a different answer to our questions. >> all right. mr. read. >> thank you, mr. chairman. thank you for your comments. what i would like to say on the issue of 100% bonus depreciation, as a new member of congress coming at this from a small business prospective, this makes good, strong, policy

sense. as i sat in my office and i would put my capital budgets together as you're making decisions about making big investment in your business, that's makes a difference. with that investment we're talking about new jobs, bringing in new people, the people that have to build those capital acquisitions that are going to go into the operation and it also strengthens the operation long term. because these are not assets that are going to be used up in a short term. these are going to strengthen the business. it would strengthen my business when we would improve them. that means i can compete on a stronger base, on a longer term basis. so to me this is a great sense. i'm glad to see bipartisan support on this, i'm glad to see maybe this can be an example of us becoming stronger through

this conference committee, having some successes like this and i look forward to its inclusion in the ultimate product that we get to and i do echo your sentiments, mr. van holland, that the focus needs to be on the three. but at the same time we're achieving those three items, i think this is another success story that can make the start of an agreement bipartisan, agreement. i would urge we accept the proposal. >> i would -- >> another round? >> all right. senator baucus. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i appreciate that. and there is a great deal of consensus and i certainly agree with my colleague from maryland, congressman van holland. our focus needs to be on dealing with the payroll tax and medicare issues and unemployment insurance and i certainly support the bonus depreciation.

i think that's an important tool we need to continue. i'm somewhat confused by the house rules. i served in the house for a long time but i'm confused. i thought your house rules allowed to you extend the tax breaks for the highest income people without any offsets but maybe i was wrong about that. and now you're saying that we have long standing tax policies that you -- i know that's for a different day but i would think that there should be a different standard used when we're talking about extending current policies that have been long standing but i think that's an issue that has to be coupled with this discussion and i know we're trying to get the policy today but i agree that how we offset this is very much affecting our decisions on some of these

policy determinations. i want to speak in support of senator balk us's point that there are tax extender policies that we need to take up now. we need the predictability in the code. the lack of predictability costs us our economy. so if you're a business owner and there was one that i was with yesterday when we brought in some of our small business leaders, i had ceo marlin steel, it's a small company that makes steel product, 100% american, including the machinery they use is made in america. they produce a high-quality product sold in america and sold around the world and producing a positive balanced payment for america. this is what we want, to expand

manufacturer. the first thing the ceo said to me is it would be important to have predictability on the r & d credit. they're a high quality. so the failure of expending this is -- i'm all for we should be taking these up in tax reform but realistically we're not going to get that done this month and we have a chance to get some predictability in the code and we should look at the expiring tax provisions and see what we can do. i would add to the list work opportunity tax credits. i worked with senator levin when i was in the house and it's important for people having a very difficult time finding jobs. but i want to take this time to talk about the energy extenders, the green energy extenders because here is an issue that i

would hope we would be able to include in our package. and i mention that because we are still trying to catch up to have a level playing field on all sources of energy. we're not. the gas and oil industry has incredible incentives that are permanent and we're trying to make the secure and the opportunity to invest in renewable energies is very much compromised by the expiration of the tax incentives that help reduce. this is an issue that i've heard from more members of the senate, both democrats and republican. but a couple of my republican colleagues telling me please bring this up, that it's affecting their manufacturing, that they're starting to pull back. i give you an example in the production tax credit dealing

with trash facilities. we have an opportunity in maryland to move forward with such a facility. it cannot be put into service until the first quarter of 2014. therefore, the tax credit has expired. it has expired. and we need to get predictability if we want investors to go into that field. wind expires in 2012. i can tell you you can't move forward with a wind project today because you can't put in the service until 2013. so i would urge us to give that predictability through the industry. the wind industry right now is already announcing layoffs because of the expiration of the win tax credit. $60 billion was invested in the project since 2005. the amount of turbine production in the united states was 25% of the wind turbines. we're talking about manufacturing jobs as well the energy sauerss. and last li let me mention the transit extension, which affects all of our communities.

until january of this year a person who used transit to commute rather than bring in their cars and parking were able to deduct up to $230 a month. it goes down now to 125 because we haven't extended the transit credit. some people say we'll fix this retroactively. we don't have do it now. if you live next to crispy and holland in community to the capital it, costs but $200 a month. you can only deduct now $125. you used to be able to did dee duct the whole amount. people are making decisions now to drive their cars into dc. and that's going to have a factor. they get the sparking free. we need to take up those types of issues now for the sake of

our environment, for the same of our economy and the sick of the energy issues. so i would just urge us to understand the penalty we may when we have lapse of these provisions. we pay a cost for it and i would hope that we'd have the opportunity to take up the issues in a responsible way, not losing focus of the three principal objectives that we have to get done. >> all right opinion i think it's a senate republican's turn at this opportunity. and then we'll continue to move around. >> okay. we can do that.

>> mr. chairman, i just have a question. do any of you here want to tackle the tax extenders before we've completed our work within the scope of congress? >> i'd like to summarize the discussion in relating to our focus.

i think we have to keep our eye on the ball and the three major issues that need to be resolved and resolved wisely and policy will very much be related to pay for it and trying to separate them out i think will turn out to be artificial. and that's why we need to keep our eye on the ball on the three major issues before us. one of them -- senator barrasso while you're here, i want to say something to you as to unemployment and the condition to consider it an emergency. you were talking as a member and a physician of impact of long-term unemployment on families, you said it passionately from your own experience, what it has to do with health, what it has to do with the spirit within a family and all that's related to it. it just struck me that we should very much as we consider this issue remember those words. we have an historically high number -- high percentage of long-term unemployed in this country. and as we look at the 5 million to 6 million people almost 50% long term unemployed. we need to remember they are not

numbers, they're families. and to talk about eliminating weeks starting right away from long-term unemployed i think is a serious blow not only to the national economy but to millions of individuals and their families. and so we have with that an absolute need to keep our eye on the ball as we do on the payroll tax and on sgr. and let me just say as to extenders, you and i have worked on extenders it seems like forever.

and i don't think the main issue should be scope. our conference committees have usually found ways to handle critical issues before them, but i do think our first order of business is to address effectively the three issues before us. and then we can discuss other issues not tying ourselves up into -- how we pay for things, what our priorities are and how we fit things together. and as javier said, we have to remind ourselves as to the urgency here the time limit because there's no one around this table who wants us to fail, no one.

thank you. >> i appreciate those comments. before i go to mr. reed, this time frame is really about bonus depreciation. and so i realize there a lot of things that we want to talk about and we have to eat our vegetables before we have dessert and we know what those issues are. i do want to say that i have said from the beginning this is a strict scope of conference because we have so little time to resolve these issues. if it's not in the house bill and it's not in the senate bill, then it's not before this conference. mr. reed. >> thank you, chairman. i just wanted to respond to the comment about what has changed in regards to paying for tax policy, paying for things that we do in this conference. and what i would like to say is that as a member of the freshman class and i think as a member of

all of us here, we are now operating in a different time. there is a fiscal crisis looming on the horizon. i don't think anyone in this room disagrees with the threat of the national debt to our nation and what is coming down the pipeline. so i'm proud to be part of a class, to be part of a new group of members of congress and as members who used to be there now are talking the language that we talk and that we got to pay for our decisions in washington, it is refreshing to have to answer the question as to why did the policy shift from yesterday to today. and that is because i think there's a new mentality in the house in particular that we have to pay for our decisions out of washington. and i think that's what the american people, hard working taxpayers back at home expect us to do. and that is a significant change in the culture of d.c. that i'm hearing from so many people and i think if we continue down that vein of thought processes that we will be able to accomplish great things for america and prevent that fiscal crisis that's coming down the horizon. >> again, on bonus depreciation, i think i've heard a fair amount of consensus on that particular issue. i'm prepared to move forward on any other items that senator baucus may wish to discuss if that's the -- i guess senator casey. sorry. >> i have less than a minute so

it will be quick and it's on 100% expensing. the key point here answered know there's a lot of agreement on this but i just wanted to say a real person in the real world on december 22nd bloomberg reporter katherine dodge wrote the following -- she talked about campbell fittings, a maker of industrial host couple lings using this particular tax break to buy equipment that allowed the family-owned business about 50 miles northwest of philadelphia to offer more innovative products at a lower cost to better compete with overseas rivals. here what's joe mcguinn said, the executive vice president, quote, it's putting people to work right now, end of quote.

that's all i need to say about the great idea. >> mr. chairman. >> i think senator baucus is a senate republican -- >> no. >> i wanted to make a comment on a different subject if i could. as i've been look around the table -- >> no, we're in 100%. >> i've noted the size of the water bottles on the house side and the senate side -- >> i had the same observation. >> i want the record to reflect the senate's going big. >> and some of you haven't taken a sip. >> we'll go to mr. levin. if there's no one else, i think we're concluded in this round of discussion on bonus depreciation. i think there might be some other items you might want to discuss. >> mr. chairman, i'd like to submit a senate offering and pass it out. this is with respect to ui. there's been a lot of discussions about work surge requirements, reemployment, eligibility assessment, work sharing, self-employment