Victor Fazio: “I will just close and yield back any remaining time simply to say, if there was a justification based on a major tax…”

“I will just close and yield back any remaining time simply to say, if there was a justification based on a major tax bill, straining the resources of the Joint Tax Committee would have been in this fiscal year. This is the year that we probably would find that committee spending long hours and putting in extra time trying to meet the needs of both the Senate and the House as we put together probably one of the largest tax bills we will see in this decade. But of course, this request comes in after the fact. It does not go into effect until the 1st of October. But I think, in addition, we have to keep in mind the Joint Committee's stature here. The Senate has chosen not to make the kind of reductions in staffing that have been so prominently discussed ad nauseam in the House of Representatives. We did make sizable reductions, eliminating essentially a third of our staffing, most of which of course were majority staff of the former majority Democrats when the new majority took over. We understand that decision. We understand that it has been made. And I believe it should apply across the board. It seems to me the people who need this committee from the other side of the Capitol are among those who need it least, because they have done absolutely nothing to track the reductions that have been made in this body. So the joint committee is available, obviously, to the Committee on Ways and Means. It is an additional staffing assistance to them.”