The Senate Finance Committee stands between us and stands between businesses that are almost prostrate, stands between us and destruction, and we feel that we can come to you for support and for protection. You will have no taxes to pay anything with if you do not keep American industry alive, and we have a right to depend on you gentlemen to do it, no matter what propositions, impractical propositions, are brought up.
This act would affect building conditions in my State. While in many districts the population is quite dense, the districts are widely scattered. The irrigation districts are densely populated, but then there will be wide areas where there is practically no population at all. When you limit the radius to 50 miles you are putting out of business a good many of our building and loan associations because they cannot operate in an area supported by the business they will have in the small areas covered in this bill.
Believe such legislation would eventually seriously injure home-financing institutions which have been in existence in the country over a hundred years.
I say that when you set up that type of corporation and you set up that sort of insurance company and operate it in the manner proposed, you are going to close every building association in the United States. They cannot survive under it to save their souls. This is the heart of this whole bill.
…no matter who pays the unemployment insurance bill in the first instance, it comes out of money available for wages and so is all paid by the workers in the long run. But like other indirect taxes, those who bear the burden do not realize in under such a scheme as the Wagner-Lewis bill proposes. If they did, they would be careful how it was spent and would raise objections if slackers and chiselers attempted to love off it. If they thought it was being paid by employers and by the State, many would be tempted to join the slacker and chiseler class. Any bill which purports to lay the whole burden on management (although it cannot be done) is doubly vicious in tendency.
The imposition on industry at this time of the tax burden contemplated by this measure would render business recovery absolutely hopeless.
[The bill] tends to retard the increase of pay rolls, because of the absorption of this amount of money for taxation purposes; it retards the increase of employment also. It is a permanent tax, with no limit, regardless of economic conditions in general or of the individual company. In other words, it may be the last straw, as I said before, that puts this company over the line into bankruptcy.
…we cannot consider this bill in a vacuum. Industry today is facing a number of bills here on the Hill, all of which are of the same sort, and we have a right to look at them as a whole; because none of them is going to be destructive of industry in itself, but, taken as a whole, they are going to impose a very serious burden on the industries of the United States, which are now trying to come out of the depression.
The imposition on industry at this time of the tax burden contemplated by this measure would render business recovery absolutely hopeless. Manufacturing industry is now engaged in a desperate struggle in an effort to continue operations and provide jobs. Most industries have been operating at a loss for several years. Industry is not prepared at this time to accept the added burden as contemplated by this bill.
…to impose this burden at this time, when industry is just struggling to get on its feet, is going to still further retard the very recovery which is necessary to create these reserves. That is the basis of our opposition to these provisions.
