Orrin Hatch: “last week I joined with the Secretary of the Treasury, the Director of the National Economic Council, our Senate…”

“last week I joined with the Secretary of the Treasury, the Director of the National Economic Council, our Senate majority leader, the Speaker of the House, and the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee in releasing a unified framework for tax reform. This is a big step in the ongoing effort to overhaul our Nation's miserable Tax Code. I have been in the Senate awhile, and I can only remember a few times when the White House and the House and Senate leadership were in agreement on an issue as complicated as tax reform so the current state of affairs is pretty remarkable. Still, as we made clear in the framework document, this is only a step; it is not a final product. The House and the Senate tax-writing committees will be tasked with putting together legislation that is aimed at meeting the goals and principles that are outlined in the framework. Therefore, as the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, my top goal at the moment is to produce a comprehensive tax reform bill that can get at least 14 votes in the committee because, without that, there likely will not be any tax reform. Yet, before we can get to that point, we have to pass the fiscal year 2018 budget resolution. Make no mistake, the budget resolution is critical to our tax reform efforts.…”