Political Quotes

“Senator Coats and I have introduced bipartisan tax reform legislation. It is the first comprehensive overhaul of tax reform law in 25 years, since 1986, when then-President Reagan and Democrats got together and worked on a bipartisan reform that cleaned out scores of special interest tax breaks in order to hold down rates for all Americans and keep progressivity. Senator Coats and I have worked also with Senator Gregg. I had that good fortune for a number of years, and have picked up on some of what was done in 1986 by President Reagan and a large group of Democrats. He and I intend, in the days ahead, to come to the floor of the Senate and talk about some of the most offensive aspects of our totally dysfunctional tax system. Today, we thought we would begin by discussing the alternative minimum tax. It seems to be pretty much the poster child for what is broken about the American tax system. It was enacted in 1969, after the Congress learned that 3 years earlier 155 wealthy taxpayers had paid no tax at all. The alternative minimum tax was designed to hit what amounted to a small group of tax evaders and not the millions of middle-class taxpayers who get shellacked by the AMT every single springtime. The problem has been that Congress has never indexed the AMT brackets for inflation. While the regular tax bracket standard deductions and exemptions do get adjusted for inflation, the brackets and exemptions of the alternative minimum tax do not.…”