Dan Coats: “I want to thank my colleague from Oregon, Senator Wyden, for working with me, and particularly working with Senator…”

“I want to thank my colleague from Oregon, Senator Wyden, for working with me, and particularly working with Senator Gregg who is now retired from this Chamber. They spent an extraordinary amount of time, very productive but very time consuming, trying to put together a comprehensive tax reform, which, as Senator Wyden has said, has been 25 years since we have tackled the Tax Code to try to simplify it and try to take out egregious provisions that were put in it over the years that may benefit a special few but don't begin to address the average middle-income taxpayer who is bearing a very substantial burden of taxes paid in this country. Probably the most egregious provision and, as Senator Wyden said, the poster child for the current dysfunction of the Tax Code and our tax system is the alternative minimum tax. Senator Wyden and Senator Gregg's program that they put together--and Senator Gregg urged me as I was coming into the Senate and he was leaving to work with Senator Wyden in terms of working to keep this bipartisan effort going forward, and I have had the pleasure of doing so. We do have a comprehensive bill that we wish to debate and share with our colleagues. But we also want to point out the reason why tax reform is so necessary.…”