Gilbert Gutknecht: “Since 1986, and now we are going to do it again. And every time we talk about reforming the Tax Code, what, in effect…”

“Since 1986, and now we are going to do it again. And every time we talk about reforming the Tax Code, what, in effect, we do is we make it more complicated. Now, in some respects, I do have a vested interest, because my daughter and my son-in-law are both CPAs. So, in some respects, if I want full employment for my daughter and son-in-law, we want to make this Tax Code even more complicated. But the interesting thing is when I talk to them, they say, make the Tax Code simpler. And the truth of the matter is, the best thing we could do is eliminate the income tax system all together and make it a consumption tax. Mr. Speaker, there is an old adage that if you want more of something, you should subsidize it. If you want less of something, you should tax it. And what do we do in America? We tax income. We tax investment. We tax savings. We tax productivity. We tax all the things we want more of, and yet we subsidize consumption, indirectly. What we are really talking about is something very revolutionary. It is about a whole new concept. It is about changing the whole paradigm in the way the Federal Government raises revenue, and saying, wait a second, why do we want to tax the things we want more of? We ought to tax the things that may, in fact, drag down our economy. So this is so important.”