Orrin Hatch: “To President Obama's credit, he put his money where his rhetoric is. Most of the loophole closures and offshore measures…”

“To President Obama's credit, he put his money where his rhetoric is. Most of the loophole closures and offshore measures were contained in his budget. If we subtract the two categories of tax increases, there remains $1.73 trillion in tax increases the Senate Democratic budget must find by cutting back tax expenditures. Here we go again. This is a very important chart. I will remind everyone of something I mentioned in my first discussion of tax expenditures. The Joint Committee on Taxation warns us that tax expenditure figures are not the same as revenue estimates for policy changes. In March 2011, the CBO released a set of budget options for deficit reduction. On the revenue options, CBO and Joint Committee on Taxation estimated the proposals. There are a number of them that deal with cutbacks on tax expenditures. If we start with the Senate Democratic budget's target of $1.73 trillion, we can see an illustration of some policy options that tax writers would have to consider. I have a chart that lists the revenue raised from some of these options. Let's look at this chart. It may be difficult to read on a television monitor, so I will go through these. These are tax expenditure policy options from the Congressional Budget Office to raise revenue. In other words, we have a tax to take away these tax expenditures. No. 1 would be eliminate the deduction for State and local taxes. I don't think many people are going to want that to happen. No.…”