Friday, March 2, 2007

U.S. Senator Johnny Isakson (R-GA)
Floor Statement on Tax Code Termination Act
Remarks as Delivered on the Senate Floor

Mr. President, back in Georgia, we have a saying. When people are treating the symptoms and never treating the cause, we say they are avoiding the 800-pound gorilla in the living room. I wish to talk for a minute about a 6-pound gorilla that is in the United States Capitol. It is called the U.S. Tax Code.

Printed in the 8-point font type, the U.S. Tax Code weighs 6 pounds, but the burden is equal to that or more of an 800-pound gorilla on the backs of American business and American families. To that end, I am joined by Senators VITTER, CHAMBLISS, ALLARD, GRAHAM, and others in the introduction of Tax Code simplification legislation to finally address the 800-pound gorilla in the living room and the 6-pound gorilla on the back of every American.

This bill simply calls on the Congress to establish a tax review commission which will be required to report back to the Congress on July 4, 2010. Its job will be to analyze all options for revenue for the United States. Consumption taxes or sales taxes, flat taxes, income taxes, productivity taxes, whatever it might be, wipe the slate clean and say: If we could do it all over again, what would be the best way to finance this great country of ours.

Second, once they have made those determinations, they make the recommendations back to the Congress. Then it is the Congress's responsibility to either adopt the commission's recommendations, much as we do with BRAC, or to reject them and affirmatively ratify the Tax Code of 1986, amended thousands of times, now weighing 6 pounds on the back of every single American.

All of us have different ideas over what is the right way to do things. All of us know the United States of America needs revenue to operate. All of us know that. But since 1986 and the major rewrite of the Tax Code, every year all we have done is decorate it like a Christmas tree, amend it here, lower it there, raise it somewhere else--until it has become an absolute burden.

We all know--I know the Presiding Officer deals with it in his State, as I do--the tremendous upheaval over the alternative minimum tax which passed in the 1960s to address the 169 taxpayers who made over a million dollars who did not pay any taxes. Today, the AMT affects everybody, including a family of four making $50,000 a year, if they own their own home, deduct interest, and itemize their deductions. That is just wrong.

So rather than take individual Senators--I respect every one of us in the Chamber, including, obviously, myself--take our ideas and try to volley them back and forth, why not get a distinguished commission of learned people to sit down for a protracted period of time, analyze what is right for this country, and make recommendations to us?

We solved the political disability in terms of reforming the military when we passed BRAC. Why not take the greatest disability on the American people--and that is the Tax Code--and approach it the same way: have thoughtful people who are knowledgeable and understand the Tax Code as it is make the recommendations on what might make it better? It may be a sales tax or a consumption tax. It may be a flat income tax. It may be a series of fees or other revenue streams. It may be a combination.

But what we need most importantly is simplicity, fairness, equity, and I would submit one other thing--participation by all Americans. Everybody has a stake in this country, and everybody should contribute something. I think if we open up the Tax Code to scrutiny, we give this group 3 solid years to look and make their determination, we get the recommendation back by July 4, and then we debate it in this Congress, then, by the end of 2010, we have two choices: We ratify what we have today, which is the 600-pound gorilla on the back of every American citizen, or we look to a vision for the future and adopt a fair and a simpler and a more equitable tax system for every citizen of the United States of America.

I urge my colleagues to join us on this legislation, help bring about and make it a reality, and, for the first time since 1986, address the cause and not the symptom of the cumbersome nature of the American Tax Code.