Byron Dorgan: “The Congress in 1986 changed the tax law. And maybe it did not do such a great job. But it really tried to eliminate all…”

“The Congress in 1986 changed the tax law. And maybe it did not do such a great job. But it really tried to eliminate all the artificial things in the tax laws that promoted artificial investments and tried to let the marketplace make the decisions about where the investments would go. Prior to that time, we had a circumstance in this country where you could pick out some of the biggest names in American corporate life and find out that they made billions of dollars in profits, and what did they pay in taxes? Zero. Nothing. So in 1986, we put in place an alternative minimum tax that worked, and we said, ``You can't make billions of dollars in profits and end up paying nothing.'' The folks who work for a living pay taxes. They cannot get by without paying taxes. So we constructed an alternative minimum tax that worked. The legislation they passed last night in the House of Representatives says, ``Let's get rid of the alternative minimum tax for corporations''--with 2,000 corporations benefiting to the tune of washing away $4 billion in revenue annually. The way I calculate it, that is about a $2 million a corporation every year. Talk about gifts? There is a gift. I bet there was not much debate about that.”