Dale Bumpers: “first I express my sincere gratitude to the Senator from North Dakota for taking on this issue. I decided perhaps nobody…”

“first I express my sincere gratitude to the Senator from North Dakota for taking on this issue. I decided perhaps nobody was going to offer such an amendment. But I take this opportunity to say to my colleagues and the American people, for that matter--we are not supposed to call attention to C-SPAN2, but I hope a lot of people are watching C-SPAN2 because I want to say that this is my 24th year in the Senate, and this is the most irresponsible, without question, the most irresponsible provision I have ever seen in a piece of legislation. The very idea of saying we are going to abolish the Internal Revenue Code without a clue as to what we are going to replace it with is the height of irresponsibility. I know the applause lines. As the old saying goes, I know how to bring people to their feet. The object of any responsible legislator is to bring people to their senses. Everybody knows that when you talk to the Chamber of Commerce, if you are looking for that nice applause, just get on the Internal Revenue Service. Everybody has his own favorite horror story. I have my own. I daresay every Member of this body has his own horror story about their arrogance, how overbearing they are, how they have cost you money. Those are indefensible. I am not defending those.…”