Steve Largent: “let me first of all give my colleagues just a little brief history on how this came about and tell them that I am really…”

“let me first of all give my colleagues just a little brief history on how this came about and tell them that I am really saddened by the course of debate that we have had today. I will tell my colleagues and confess freely to the gentleman from New York that the Tax Code and the problems that we have with the Tax Code today is not a Democrat problem, it is not a Republican problem, it is everybody's problem. It is an American problem and we need to address it, and that is what the Tax Code Termination Act is attempting to do. I would tell the gentleman and all of my colleagues in the House that the very first person that I went to after we wrote this bill was a Democrat, was Senator John Breaux in the Senate, and I told him about this idea and asked for his support. One of the next people that I went to was the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Gephardt), the distinguished minority leader, and asked him for his support. I had read his comments out on the campaign trail where he was talking about, and these are his quotes, ``Decades of toying and tinkering at the margins have only made the problem worse. And I have concluded that the only way to fix everything is to replace everything, to overhaul the entire system from top to bottom.'' That is what Congressman Gephardt said. So I thought, surely, he would support this measure. That is what he is saying on the campaign trail, that we need to abolish the Tax Code.”