I don't know what bill the talk is in the context of, but it was an entertaining speech.
Hildabeast up talking about the NOLA leeves.....
I am disappointed that the administration seems to have put tax reform on the back burner. Why extend tax reductions, which we are talking about now, piecemeal when we should be considering fundamental tax reform instead? The goal of any government revenue program should be to raise sufficient funds to operate public programs with the least amount of disruption to the economy. Our tax structure should be simple, fair, and honest. Our current Tax Code achieves none of these objectives.Last year, the Tax Foundation, a conservative think tank, estimated that Americans spent more than 6 billion hours doing their taxes and that complying with the current Federal income tax code costs U.S. individual businesses and nonprofits $265 billion, which is 22 cents for every dollar of income tax collected. This is equivalent to the combined budgets of the Departments of Education, Homeland Security, Justice, Treasury, Labor, Transportation, Veterans Affairs, Health and Human Services, and NASA.
Individuals and businesses lose money they could otherwise save, invest, spend on their kids' education, or enjoy an extra evening out with the family. But the Federal Government gains nothing from this atrocious tax system we have. It is the equivalent of stacking money in a pile and lighting a match. It doesn't do anything for anybody.
We all recognize the need for a simple, fair, and honest Tax Code. This would be a win-win goal for everyone. We will soon be considering a bill that would cut taxes by about $60 billion. Simply cutting tax compliance costs in half, from 20 percent to 10 percent, would have the impact of a much larger tax cut in the amount of $130 billion. In other words, if we could get a fair, simple, understandable Tax Code and eliminate this enormous amount of money it costs all of us to pay our taxes and reduce that by half, we could save the American people $130 billion. That is real money. This tax cut we are talking about is $60 billion. We are talking about $130 billion out there that we have in our pockets. It doesn't impact the revenues to the Federal Government one iota. However, it would be a tax cut that doesn't reduce our revenue.
We all know that fundamental tax reform is critical. I cannot understand why some of my colleagues want to make so many provisions of the Tax Code permanent or add new tax cuts when we very well may be eliminating precisely the same provisions as part of fundamental tax reform.
The problem we have is this, if you want to be practical: When I got involved in this whole business in 2003 of the $350 billion tax reduction to stimulate the economy, and we started talking with some of the high leadership in the House of Representatives, I was saying to them: When I was Governor, what we did is we looked at tax reductions that stimulate the economy, and then we looked at other areas where we could increase taxes that would have less impact on the economy. We had to be concerned about balancing our budget.
What I heard from the leadership on the other side of the Capitol was: We can't increase taxes because we all took the pledge that we can't increase taxes.
I said: Even if you could increase taxes that don't have that much impact on the economy so that you could decrease taxes that would help stimulate the economy?
No way.
Where are we going? If that is the deal, we will never get anything done around here.
It is my opinion that it is not time for piecemeal tinkering. No homeowner would remodel their kitchen and bathroom a year before tearing down the house to build a newer and better one. We need to tear down the house.
If you look at that Tax Code, consider it to be a Christmas tree. If you look at all the ornaments on that tree, you would sit back and say: Who in the devil ever decorated this tree? They must have been under the influence of alcohol or drugs. That is what it is today. We just keep adding things, one after another, another bell, another whistle, this and that. It is time for us to look at this.