On the recordOctober 31, 2017
I agree with my colleague from Georgia that we need to simplify our Tax Code. We need real tax reform. We have seen a lot of junk built up in the Tax Code over many years, put there by special interests that seek special deals for themselves--deals that are not enjoyed by the American public. We should do tax reform. What we should not do is increase our national debt and our national deficits, and we all know that the budget plan that passed this Senate--and just recently passed the House--has written right into it an increase in the national debt of $1.5 trillion over the next 10 years. In other words, it is engineered right into that bill. So I hope our colleagues who really do care about reducing our national debt will make sure that, as we discuss this tax proposal, we do not increase our national debt. We should, of course, eliminate unnecessary and wasteful expenditures, but we should not have a tax proposal that increases our debt by $1.5 trillion and possibly more. As it appears now, that would primarily be done to provide big tax breaks to very wealthy people and big corporations, at the expense of everybody and everything else in the country. But we will have a fuller debate starting tomorrow when the House Ways and Means Committee unveils its proposal.
