George Miller: “While there was a great deal of controversy in the Committee on Ways and Means and on this floor about the fairness and…”

“While there was a great deal of controversy in the Committee on Ways and Means and on this floor about the fairness and extent to which the Tax Code should be used to sell these communications assets, it was clearly the intent of the Republicans to get rid of all of them, and when amendments were offered to make them fairer, to reduce the cost to the taxpayer, and to scrutinize them more than they have in the past, that was rejected, because all of these had to be killed. Apparently when they got to conference committee, they went over an inventory of the impact of this amendment, that this would have. They found there were 17 or 18 or 19 deals that were in the works, that were in stages of completion, and would benefit from this tax provision, the sale of communications assets. They decided to kill them all until they got to one, until they got to the one that represented Rupert Murdoch.”