U.S. Senator Lamar Alexander Wednesday released the following statement on his vote in support of the Republicans’bill to prevent tax increases, and against S. 3412, a bill from the Majority that would raise tax rates on small business owners:
“The Senate majority's solution to 41 months of unemployment above 8 percent is to raise taxes on the people who create millions of jobs. Our solution is to prevent a tax increase while we recover from the recession and work to avoid the fiscal cliff by dealing with the debt, dealing with the sequester, reducing spending, and working on tax reform—if we can come together to do that, we'll see the economy boom.”
The Republicans’ tax-relief bill would extend today’s tax rates for small business owners and others for another year as well as require a comprehensive tax-reform bill within a year of enactment.
S. 3412, the Majority bill, would cost an estimated 710,000 jobs, according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. It would increase the estate tax to a level that would impact 20 times more farms than under current law, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation, and is strongly opposed by the American Farm Bureau Federation.