Political Quotes

“Nobody has spent more time and more energy and put more effort into the way in which American income gets hidden offshore so people can avoid paying taxes and corporations can avoid paying taxes than Chairman Levin. He is our expert. There are indeed other loopholes that are exploited, primarily by corporations but also by very high-income taxpayers, hiding money in the Cayman islands, putting assets into Ireland and other tax havens, and refusing to treat them as American, even though it is nominally an American company. There are enumerable tricks. I will close by making one point. Very often people look at what we are trying to accomplish, and even actually pretty honest reporters will say the Democrats actually want to raise taxes. That is the fight. Republicans want to cut spending; Democrats want to raise taxes. No. We raised taxes once already. We raised the rates for people over $450,000 thousand a year in the last big agreement. What we want to do now is to go into the Tax Code and close down the loopholes. That is all we are looking for. What most Americans do not understand is that if we look at how much money goes out the backdoor of the Tax Code through loopholes, through special rates, through exemptions and so forth, it is very nearly the same amount of money that is actually collected through the Tax Code and becomes the revenue of the United States of America. We let almost as much money out the backdoor of the Tax Code as we collect through the Tax Code.…”