Political Quotes

“I am very pleased that my colleague from Vermont is discussing this issue on the floor. The Finance Democratic staff has been looking into this and has been working also with the Senator's staff, and I think that it would be fair to say that every few hours, this bill just seems to get worse. I mean, we don't know if, in the middle of the night, somebody will add another round of favors for the powerful interests, the politically well connected. What I can tell the Senator is what we have been able to put together as of now. In 2004, legislation was written that we were very much involved in that helped eliminate the loophole by requiring U.S. citizens to be bona fide residents of the Virgin Islands and imposing U.S. tax on income effectively connected with the United States. Now, in the dark of night, as I have indicated, it appears that we have a provision that is relaxing this rule. From our conversations, I know the Senator understands that we all want to help the people of the Virgin Islands after a devastating hurricane. Are we helping people by creating a huge, new loophole, possibly for a handful of those people who are especially well connected and can get to the Finance Committee? I am convinced that if one looks at the Paradise Papers and the Panama Papers, what they were warning about in those papers was of all of these efforts to stash money and create new options for people to wheel and deal in offshore accounts. So my colleague is right.…”