Paul Coverdell: “today I rise to offer a sense of the Senate amendment to the concurrent budget resolution before us that sets our nation…”

“today I rise to offer a sense of the Senate amendment to the concurrent budget resolution before us that sets our nation on the path to budgetary balance. This amendment addresses a practice that I believe is one of the most reprehensible burdens government can place on its taxpayers, retroactive taxation. My conviction for putting a stop to retroactive taxation dates back to just months after I began my service representing Georgia in the United States Senate and occurred as a result of one of the most egregious examples of retroactive taxation in our history. I am speaking of the retroactive tax rate increases enacted as part of the Administration's 1993 tax package whose passage in the Senate required the Vice President to cast the deciding vote. At the time, estimates of the price tag to taxpayers of these retroactive tax increases were over $10 billion! In other words, with more than two-thirds of the year having been gone, the federal government effectively told the American people, ``All your planning was for naught, and we don't care.''”