Political Quotes

“I thank Senator Levin for his leadership on this issue. I am proud to be part of his Levin-Whitehouse group in putting this together. If we boil down the discussions that we are having back and forth about the budget, they come to a very simple question; that is, can we use the money that is in tax avoidance, in tax loopholes toward solving our sequester problem, our deficit problem, and our debt problem? The way this has been described so far is that there are spending cuts. That is one part of the equation. The other part of the equation is tax increases. That has been the way this has been framed. That overlooks the third big piece of the problem, which is money that goes out the backdoor of the Tax Code without ever coming into the U.S. Government in revenues. I want to let people who are watching know-- because they probably won't believe it--what a colossal number that is. We get $1.09 trillion in revenue out of the individual Tax Code. We get $181 billion in revenue out of the corporate Tax Code. We give away $1.02 trillion out the backdoor of the Tax Code for individual deductions and loopholes. We give away $157 billion out the backdoor of the Tax Code in corporate deductions and loopholes. The IRS estimates that there is $385 billion which never even gets into the formula because of what Chairman Levin was talking about: companies and individuals who hide their revenue and income offshore so it never even gets into the tax package.…”