Angie Craig: “I rise today, on the eve of Tax Day, 2008, to discuss the State of our Nation's Tax Code. Only a few weeks ago, we…”

“I rise today, on the eve of Tax Day, 2008, to discuss the State of our Nation's Tax Code. Only a few weeks ago, we debated the fiscal year 2009 budget resolution and some recurring themes very quickly emerged. Over and over again, both sides of the aisle were speaking of the problems they heard about, the death tax and problems with the alternative minimum tax and the unfair tax advantage of the wealthy and the burden on the middle class and other problems that are systemic within America's Tax Code. You know what we did about these problems? We only offered temporary solutions like we have offered for the last decade. Here is what is wrong with that type of thinking: There are not temporary problems that can be fixed with temporary solutions, they are fundamental problems that require fundamental changes in America's Tax Code. Our current Tax Code is broken, and you saw Democrats and Republicans alike opining on the floor of the Senate during the debate over the budget resolution about taxes. We tried to fix it with a temporary measure, but we have served only to make things worse. There is exactly what we have done over the last good number of years. Today's Tax Code is over 67,000 pages long, and it is growing. According to IRS estimates, taxpayers spend 6 billion hours annually trying to fit themselves into the Tax Code and over $265 billion in related compliance costs. Ladies and gentlemen, fellow Americans, it is only going to get worse.”