Fundamental Tax Reform Needed

Floor Speech

FUNDAMENTAL TAX REFORM NEEDED -- (House of Representatives - June 08, 2005)

(Mr. EMANUEL asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)

Mr. EMANUEL. Madam Speaker, today in the Committee on Ways and Means we are holding a hearing on tax reform. We have a tax system that is needlessly complicated, inequitable, and burdensome to the middle class. We need fundamental tax reform that reflects the values and the interests of our middle-class families, not the special interests.

President Bush when he announced the commission said his core principle is that tax reform should not adversely affect government revenues. The democratic core principle of tax reform is it should not adversely affect the middle class, not the government. It is the middle class that is our taxpayer.

In the last 4 years, the Tax Code has been filled with special breaks for special interests. At the same time, the tax burden has shifted from wealth to work, form passive dividends to daily wages.

Madam Speaker, four objectives of tax reform:

Take the five different educational tax breaks for college education and make it one $3,000 credit per child going to college.

Second, simplify family credit. Take the earned income tax credit, the per child and the dependent care and go from 20 pages of code down to 12 questions.

Third, on retirement, bring the 16 different versions of the Tax Code on savings down to a universal pension.

Madam Speaker, these things would help the middle class eliminate burdensome paperwork and eliminate pages and pages of Tax Code and help the middle class achieve a middle-class dream.

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