Political Quotes

“In quick reference to the previous speaker, I don't know how you can say how do we get out of this, and then simultaneously embrace the Romney tax plan, which is $5 trillion more of tax cuts and propose at the same time the extension of the Bush tax cuts. That's a $7 trillion tax cut proposal. Has anybody heard about those million new veterans we have, the 45,000 that have been wounded? What's going to happen to the veterans system for years to come? It's a $4 trillion cost of the war in Iraq when you factor all of that together. We've had some really good hearings this year on both sides. We've talked fundamentally about the best path forward to tax reform, and we all agree that the current system is creaking of its own weight. But that's contrary to the idea of fast-tracking, what needs to be a deliberative procedure for understanding what the elimination of some of these expenditures really means. Despite the talk here today, I'll bet you a year from now that we will not have eliminated the homeowner deduction, and a year from now we will not have eliminated employer-based health insurance, and we will not have eliminated the tax expenditure for charitable deductions. The question is: What's the framework that we're taking up today? The response to that is: not much. Let me start by saying that what's striking about this proposal is that we all acknowledge that over 6 billion hours a year and $160 billion is too much in trying to comply with the current system.…”