Byron Dorgan: “My point is this, Mr. Gale, who writes about the sales tax down at the Brookings Institution, says that if you had a…”

“My point is this, Mr. Gale, who writes about the sales tax down at the Brookings Institution, says that if you had a national sales tax and are going to include all of the things that you need to include to make up the revenue, that you have to have a sales tax of 30 percent or more. The only reason I am raising this question is, What do you intend to replace the current Tax Code with? A value-added tax? A national sales tax? Or any one of a half dozen other iterations? I do not know. Then I ask the following question: With whatever you replace the current tax with, do you intend to provide for a deduction for home mortgage interest paid by someone who has just purchased a home and is banking in the coming years on being able to deduct that home mortgage interest? Is that part of some future plan or not? Does one intend, for example, to provide for a deduction for health insurance costs? Our current tax program in this country largely provides for that as a business deduction.”