Chuck Grassley: “The legislation that contains these provisions spans years so they don't correspond on a year-by-year basis. The point…”

“The legislation that contains these provisions spans years so they don't correspond on a year-by-year basis. The point here is to look at what Congress was able to accomplish over a 6-year period as evidence of what it might be able to accomplish over the 5-year window of the budget resolution. Some might say it is comparing apples and oranges, because the House was under Republican control during that period. But as we are seeing, Democratic control does not seem to have changed the allergic reaction of the House of Representatives to revenue raisers. Because during the markup, while the chairman of the Budget Committee was holding up his chart, as he did today, with a picture of a German sewer system that U.S. companies are claiming phony depreciation deductions on through abusive leasing transactions, the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee in the other body was holding a hearing and somehow sympathizing with lobbyists about how it is bad tax policy to shut off these tax benefits. The most significant package of revenue raisers over this period was in the American Jobs Creation Act of 2004. I took a lot of heat on those revenue raisers, as shown in the Congressional Daily article entitled 'Balance of Payments, A Closer Look at Tax Bill Losers.' This article refers to the revenue raisers in the Senate passed JOBS bill as 'the most significant rollback of tax loopholes since 1986.'”