[Congressional Record Volume 142, Number 33 (Tuesday, March 12, 1996)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E323]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      WAYS AND MEANS SCHIZOPHRENIA

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                        HON. FORTNEY PETE STARK

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                        Tuesday, March 12, 1996

  Mr. STARK. Mr. Speaker, last week, the chairman of the Ways and Means 
Committee delivered a speech on the 1996 schedule of the committee.
  The first three pages talked about how horribly complex the current 
Tax Code is and how the chairman wants to tear the code out `by its 
roots,' substitute a kind of sales tax, and make the IRS unnecessary.
  The last two pages talks about what the committee is going to do in 
March in the health sector: pass medical savings accounts, which are an 
elaborate and complicated new type tax deferred savings plan, and 
increase the tax deductibility of health insurance for the self-
employed, but not their workers.
  Hello.
  I am sure that the chairman writes his own speeches, and if I did not 
know that, I would say that two different people who had never met 
wrote that speech. How can you start a short speech saying you are 
going to abolish the current Tax Code and greatly simplify it, and end 
that speech saying you are going to add two new special incentives that 
will add pages of regulations and forms to the law?

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