Political Quotes

“Mr. President, I understand we now have a new bill. I am looking at Senator Wyden hold up that new bill. I got a sheet that looked as if it came from K Street that gave us a list of changes that will be included in the managers' package. I looked at the list, and somewhere around 50 or 60 new provisions were on that list. Many of those were not bills that had been filed, so we had no idea what was going to be included in it. None of those issues--in fact, nothing in this bill has been subject to an open hearing in the Finance Committee. Now we are going to be asked, I understand, maybe later tonight to vote on those changes. Quite frankly, I don't know what those changes are, and I am not going to have an opportunity to go over those with my constituents. That is wrong. That is not the process we use to change the Tax Code of this country, a major tax reform bill. That is an outrageous process, to say that we are going to vote on a new bill without an opportunity to understand it, without any hearings, without an opportunity for constituents to give their views on it, and I must state that I find that very offensive. I want to talk about one provision in particular, and I hope we will have a chance to do something about it during the amendment process. As I understand it, the revised provisions in regard to State and local tax deduction still restrict what taxpayers can deduct on their Federal tax returns in regard to State and local taxes that they pay.…”