Orrin Hatch: “I wish to thank my colleague, who makes a lot of very important points here today, and I hope everyone in this body is…”

“I wish to thank my colleague, who makes a lot of very important points here today, and I hope everyone in this body is paying attention. Back in June I came to the floor to discuss the many items of unfinished business the Congress must take up before the end of the year. Among those items are a number of tax-related issues that simply cannot be put off without inflicting more damage on our economy and on our American taxpayers. When I spoke on the floor regarding this tax agenda 3 months ago, I used this chart right here. Sadly, as you can see from this chart, things have not changed since then. We still need to resolve the death tax. As you can see, death tax relief is the third one down listed on the chart. It will expire at the end of 2012. We need to act in order to prevent a hike in the death tax in 2013. Unfortunately, rather than work to prevent an increase in the death tax, a number of my colleagues voted earlier this summer to expand it significantly. While we have passed a bill through the Finance Committee, the Senate has yet to act on the tax extenders, which expired 9 months ago. As you can see, we have not done the tax extenders, either, on the floor. We still have not acted to address the alternative minimum tax, or AMT, which is set to hit millions of Americans if we do not act to patch it. That is right there as the second item on this chart.…”