[beyond the sea]

Panel Members

Connie Mack III (Chairman) Senior Advisor, King & Spalding LLP, and former U.S. Senator. Senator Mack served as Chairman of the Joint Economic Committee and was a member of the Finance and Banking committees.

John Breaux (Vice-Chairman), former U.S. Senator. Senator Breaux served on the Finance Committee and the sub-committee on Taxation and IRS Oversight.

William Eldridge Frenzel, former Member of the U.S. House of Representatives. Mr. Frenzel served on the Budget Committee and the Ways and Means Committee. Mr. Frenzel is a Guest Scholar at the Brookings Institution.

Elizabeth Garrett, Sydney M. Irmas Professor of Public Interest Law, Legal Ethics and Political Science, University of Southern California. Ms. Garrett served as Legislative Director and Tax and Budget Counsel to former U.S. Senator David L. Boren.

Edward P. Lazear, Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution and Professor of Human Resources, Management and Economics, Stanford University's Graduate School of Business. Mr. Lazear is the founding editor of the Journal of Labor Economics.

Timothy J. Muris, Foundation Professor, George Mason School of Law and Of Counsel, O'Melveny & Myers LLP. Mr. Muris served as Chairman of the Federal Trade Commission from 2001 to 2004.

James Michael Poterba, Department of Economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Mr. Poterba serves as Associate Department Head. He has taught at MIT since 1982.

Charles O. Rossotti, Senior Advisor, The Carlyle Group. Mr. Rossotti served from 1997 to 2002 as Commissioner of Internal Revenue. He formerly served as the President, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board of American Management Systems.

Liz Ann Sonders, Chief Investment Strategist, Charles Schwab. Ms. Sonders joined U.S. Trust, a division of Charles Schwab, in 1999 as a Managing Director and member of its Investment Policy Committees.

[AmericanChef]

Well, there's yer problem right there - not one person on the committee with street smarts. Is it any wonder they can't figure out what's wrong with taxes?

[Bar-Face]

Ain't it just amazin? Every damn one of the members of the panel are members of the Ruling Class.
The very ones that benefit from a convoluted tax system. "Retired" politicians should be banned from any contact with the government. A Pox on all of them.

[Dick Bachert]

ALL DIRECT suckers at the public teat or INDIRECT suckers via the income tax system they seek to preserve. If these clowns wish to "preserve" the income tax, might I suggest it be profused with formaldahyde so future generations can come look at it in some museum as an example of what NEVER TO ALLOW BE BORN AGAIN!

I recently sent these MORONS the following comment at their website (which, due to the influx of insulting and critical messages coming in from us proles out here in fly-over country, will probably be soon shut down):

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After spending several millions in taxpayer funds for useless travel on airfares and expensive lunches in the best restaurants as befits persons of your vaunted status, the final score is in:

Taxpayers and their grandchildren: 0
K Street and the political elite: 666

Many of us knew this was a rigged deck going in but your rejection of the ONLY tax plan making any sense to millions of Americans, The Fair Tax, puts your "decision" right up there with the Captain Smith's decision to increase the speed of the Titanic through a known iceberg field. And the results will be the same.

The "message" of your "decision" seems to be "We upped OUR wealth, up yours!"

Must go now and ready the lifeboat.

[onyx]

Thank you.