Political Quotes

“an old maxim ``the more you know, the better your decision,'' underlies my introduction of the ``Corporate Accountability Tax Gap Act.'' We need this legislation because of the growing gap between what corporate America claims as giant profits to lure investors--called ``book'' profits and what it reports as little income to the Internal Revenue Service--called ``tax'' profits. While not compelling closure of this gap, this bill would require publicly traded corporations to report, and in some cases, to explain the discrepancy. Like the canary in the coal mine, a little bit of transparency in accounting would be a ``WorldCom,'' ``Enron,'' and all those other corporate scandals ``early warning system'' to avoid a repeat of this past three long years of stock market losses and to root out abusive tax shelter schemes. To those who say ``what you don't know can't hurt you,'' I submit as Exhibit A a new 2,800-page report on the Enron scandal that has been reviewed before the Senate Finance Committee. Those 2,800 pages represent essentially about 2,800 reasons why ``trust'' is no longer a substitute for ``verify'' when it comes to corporate income. This report on Enron's financial and tax shenanigans is longer than any Charles Dickens novel but no less bleak.…”