Chris Van Hollen: “let me start by thanking the Senator from Massachusetts for always telling it like it is because what we have before us…”

“let me start by thanking the Senator from Massachusetts for always telling it like it is because what we have before us in the Senate is going to do grave harm to our country, not just next year and the year after but for many years to come. We still have an opportunity to stop that from happening through our votes tomorrow. Let me also say at the outset that we need to enact tax reform in the United States of America. We need to simplify. We need to streamline. We need to reform our Tax Code. We need to get rid of all of those tax loopholes that had been put in our Tax Code by powerful special interests that have been able to hire high-priced lobbyists and get something in our Tax Code, not because it is good public policy, not because it is good for the majority of Americans but because it is good for some group of special interests. We need real tax reform. That is not what the bill in front of us does. What this bill does is take a Tax Code that is already stacked in favor of the most powerful and the most wealthy and rig it even more in favor of the most powerful and the most wealthy, and that is hard to do. You have to work at doing that. Our Republican colleagues have succeeded in taking something that was already stacked in favor of those groups and making it even worse.…”