Political Quotes

“Madam President, we are now debating the budget resolution for fiscal year 2018. The main reason this budget resolution is before us is to allow for floor consideration of tax reform. So I want to talk a little bit about what I hope will be our guiding principles on the way we would proceed on tax reform, because tax reform is needed in this country. Our Tax Code is overly complex. There are significant problems, particularly as we harmonize with the international community. There are things we need to do in our Tax Code to make it a fairer tax code, to make it a simpler tax code, to raise the revenues we need to make sure we don't have deficits. There are things we need to do. I hope that we will have three guiding principles, and I will talk about these three and how the budget resolution that came out of committee would violate each of these principles and why I cannot support it as it has been presented by the committee. First, we should have an open process on tax reform. The last time we did comprehensive tax reform, in 1986, it took well over a year for us to be able to complete the work. We had numerous committee hearings. We had a lot of public input because, when you change the Tax Code, it has lots of different effects, some of which are not apparent. There are a lot of tradeoffs, and we need to do this in an open manner. It is also important that we have a bipartisan product because we want the Tax Code to remain intact so people can plan.…”