Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, I yield myself 4 minutes. Mr. Speaker, as we wind down this debate on tax reform or, what we should really call it, tax cut, I think that we should tabulate this as a missed opportunity. This could have been done between the two parties. Instead, much of this was constructed without any Democratic input. Reminder: In 1986, the historic Tax Reform Act included President Reagan and Speaker O'Neill, Chairman Rostenkowski, Dick Gephardt, and Bill Bradley. In this instance here, 32 years later, not one hearing was held on this tax bill that is about to be voted on in the next 45 minutes. The significance of that is that there was never any back-and-forth, and in 1986, expert testimony was sought from 450 witnesses. We had not one witness who commented on the legislation. It has been advertised as a middle class tax cut. Wait until you get the bill. How can you say that this is a middle class tax cut and compare that to repeal of the estate tax? How many middle class people in America pay the estate tax? That is how many people pay the estate tax. No middle class American pays the estate tax. There is no such thing as a death tax, in addition to which a middle class tax cut is described as doing away with the alternative minimum tax. 4.5 million families pay an alternative minimum tax in America. That is it. I fixed the problem years ago for the middle class, and 27 million people stopped paying AMT. So now we are down to people at the very top.…”