William Bradley: “before there is a long list of people coming down to defend these programs that I just mentioned, let me remind them…”

“before there is a long list of people coming down to defend these programs that I just mentioned, let me remind them that this resolution does not pinpoint any specific expenditures. It simply asks that these programs be treated in a similar manner to other entitlement programs. The Joint Tax Committee estimates the revenue lost from these tax expenditures each year. While interaction effects make it difficult to pinpoint exact costs--how one tax expenditure interacts with another-- the Joint Tax Committee list will add up to over $409 billion this year. Unchecked, this list will grow to over $523 billion by 1998. The administration's recent estimates of revenue loss are somewhat higher due to last year's budget bill. Perhaps more interesting, however, are the administration's estimates of what the ``outlay equivalents'' for these tax expenditures are each year--in other words, what they would cost us if they were transformed into direct spending programs, as opposed to hidden spending programs in the Tax Code. The administration's estimate for outlay equivalents this year added up to $550 billion for 1994. This is scheduled to grow to over $660 billion by 1998. I simply do not believe that we can afford to be that generous in our Tax Code. At a time when we are talking about cutting entitlement spending and cutting discretionary spending--and properly talking about cutting those--tax expenditures should not be out of bounds.”