Lankford Says Two-Month Tax Policy Impractical

Congressman James Lankford appeared on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal this morning to discuss the Senate-passed bill to extend the payroll tax holiday for only two months. Congressman Lankford said there should be a year-long extension to bring stability to the economy and certainty for family budgets.

On the Impracticality of Two Month Tax Policy: “You cannot really do tax policy in a two-month term. That is not fair for the Senate to say, ‘This is going to be difficult, negotiations are going to be hard, but we will get it off our desk and just put it out to the American people and say ‘go figure out how to apply this.’’ Can anyone stand up and with a straight face say we should do tax policy 60 days at a time on the American people? There is nothing more destabilizing when no one knows what the tax rate is going to be. No one knows how to do their jobs. If you want to just throw money out of the door, take money from the Treasury and send it out the door, you can do that in two months. If you want to create stability in tax programs in America, you are not going to do that two months at a time.”

On Going to Conference Committee: “What we are doing today is sending over a conference report. The typical, normal way everyone who grew up in civics class to be able to track through a bill – the House passes a bill, the Senate passes a bill, the language is not the same; they go to conference and work it out, and it goes back to both bodies and is passed. That is the normal process for a bill. We passed a bill and sent it to the Senate, and they did not approve it. The Senate passed a bill and when it comes over to the House, we are not going to approve it today. We are going to ask for to go to conference.”

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