Bob Kerrey: “Our amendment includes something that I urge my colleagues to consider. My hope is Senator Moynihan will offer this as a…”

“Our amendment includes something that I urge my colleagues to consider. My hope is Senator Moynihan will offer this as a free-standing amendment later. Mr. Rossotti, quite appropriately, says we have about 600 days before the 31st of December 1999. No one is more eloquent than the Senator from Utah, Senator Bennett, talking about the problems that the year 2000 is going to create as a consequence of having to rewrite all of our computer codes. The computers will think it is the year 1900 and everything is going to end up getting shut down, a huge problem for the IRS. Mr. Rossotti is very much worried. Right now the IRS is a bit behind. He sent us a letter asking us to delay some of these provisions. We have not been able to get these scored yet from Joint Tax. I regret that. It takes a little longer out of Joint Tax than we would like. We will get that scored before we are through with this debate and we will be able to reduce some of the offsets in other areas. But I am urging Members have an opportunity to put themselves on the side of honoring the request of Mr. Rossotti, who is saying we are not going to be able to meet that year 2000 problem if a whole series of additional things are imposed upon us that we have to do. Understand, we pass the law but the IRS has to implement it. We change the law, whether it is a Tax Code or some other area of the tax law, and the IRS is the one that has to organize human beings to get the job done.”