Political Quotes

“I thank the gentleman for yielding and for his leadership on helping to have a budget that produces growth to reduce the deficit. Mr. Speaker, today, we are talking about issues on which we are very much in agreement in terms of the policy toward charitable giving. In fact, some of this legislation has been introduced by Mr. Levin and Mr. Thompson on the Ways and Means Committee, in fact, in offering an amendment in Rules last night, which was rejected by the Rules Committee, to go forward in a way that was fiscally sound and was paid for. Here is the problem that we have. We all want to have comprehensive tax reform, where we can close loopholes and we can lower the tax rate and we can have transparency in our Tax Code. In order to go to the table to do that--and I know there is bipartisan interest in doing so-- we should go to the table with as much freedom as possible and not constrained by taking rifle shots on the floor of the House for certain pieces of the Tax Code. The whole package that the Republicans are putting forth is about $800 billion. That is a lot of money. It is important for people to know that, in our budget every year, we have a part of the budget that is called tax expenditures. They are well over $1 trillion. Some of them are worthy, and we want to protect them--certainly, charitable deductions fall in that category--but many of them are not.…”