Bart Stupak: “I would agree. I do not think there would be much intestinal fortitude to try to allow a $63 million tax break for one…”

“I would agree. I do not think there would be much intestinal fortitude to try to allow a $63 million tax break for one company, for the benefit of one individual. Who pays for that but all of us, all the working men and women around this country. But you know when we were talking a little bit earlier about the alternative minimum tax. We are going to have a tax bill up this week on the floor, and we are going to give tax breaks and tax breaks here and tax breaks there, but one of the most repulsive tax breaks is the repeal of the alternative minimum tax. I know you started this special order tonight talking about that alternative corporate minimum tax, and you are talking about, before 1985, before 1986 really when the bill was signed into law, how corporations did not pay any taxes. And yet the person with the lunch bucket or the secretary or the clerk or the midnight watchman has to pay his Federal taxes. But corporations did not because they could afford the accountants, the lawyers to find the tax loopholes, and they would not have to pay any taxes. You brought up, oh, about 130 companies that did not pay any taxes. I guess one of the most striking ones was Du Pont Corporation. Between 1982 and 1985 their pretax profits were $3.8 billion--pretax profit, $3.8 billion. You know how much they paid in taxes during those years?”