Charles Rangel: “I thank Congressman Levin for this opportunity to speak. There has been some talk as to whether or not the Democrats…”

“I thank Congressman Levin for this opportunity to speak. There has been some talk as to whether or not the Democrats have finally recognized the importance of the deficit and the debt and that since we are going to pass these bills anyway, because there is a negative feeling that we are not going to have tax reform, I assume, that we might as well give some confidence to our small business people that they will have this tax incentive. Well, that is a way of thinking, but it would appear to me that if we can forgo going through the regular procedure in order to give, at this stage of our political calendar, the incentive now, I have heard no reason--and I hope I will--as to why we cannot close the loopholes that exist in the Tax Code now. It seems to me that it goes without dispute that we have trillions of dollars--certainly hundreds of billions of dollars--in the Tax Code that Republicans and Democrats believe shouldn't be there. While we are anxious to reduce the corporate tax so that we are not embarrassingly the highest in the entire world, we also know that there are so many corporations that don't pay any taxes at all. How can we ignore that? If we can say that we are going to go into debt for a trillion dollars by extensions, why can't we say we are going to pay for it by closing the loopholes?…”