[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 28 (Thursday, March 6, 1997)]
[House]
[Page H785]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                               TAX REFORM

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from South Dakota [Mr. Thune] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. THUNE. Mr. Speaker, many of my colleagues have gone before me and 
addressed an issue which I think is of great importance to the future 
of our country. In fact if you look back in 1948, the average tax 
burden in America on the average family was about 2 percent of their 
income. Today the Federal tax burden is 24 percent and when we factor 
in State and local taxes, it gets upward of 40 percent. And if you 
figure the overall cost of government to the American family today, it 
is over 50 percent of their income.
  If you look at some of the statistics that were released by the Kemp 
Commission last year, the fact is that we spend in this country over 5 
billion man-hours a year filling out tax returns. You think about the 
number of people who do nothing. Three million full-time equivalent 
people who do nothing but fill out tax returns. I think it is ironic 
because that is more people than we have in our entire Armed Forces in 
America. That tells me one thing; that we spend more time, money, and 
energy in resources defending ourselves from our own tax system than we 
do from foreign enemies. So we have a tax system in this country that 
is desperately in need of overhaul, of simplification, of common sense 
for American families and businesses.
  I would also point out that there are 471 different tax forms. I 
think the complexity of our Tax Code today was illustrated recently 
when the Internal Revenue Service expended $4 billion to come up with a 
computer system to process it which they discovered could not work. And 
so we need to simplify the Tax Code in this country in a way that makes 
sense for American families and American businesses and lowers the 
overall tax burden for our families.
  One of the things that I think you will find in this town in 
particular is a lot of institutional resistance to that. It is ironic 
as well, as I was reading some time back in the Wall Street Journal, an 
op-ed piece which suggested that in 1964 there were some 16,000 
lobbyists in Washington and today there are over 64,000 lobbyists, 
which is 125 for every Member of Congress. There is nothing wrong with 
lobbying and many of us rely on the information that they provide to 
us, but I think it points to the fact that government has become so 
inordinately complex that it takes people to interpret the laws and try 
and tell us and try and tell the American people what they mean. In 
fact lobbying, according to the article, today is an $8 billion 
industry which is larger than 57 economies in the world.
  The other point I would make in terms of the complexity of the Tax 
Code, I was also reading last year in the Wall Street Journal a story 
about the number of people in tax writing committees of the Congress 
who actually fill out their own tax returns and of the 57, I think the 
article stated that there were 6 who confirmed that they in fact did 
that. I suspect that is probably because again of the complexity of the 
Tax Code.
  And so as we look at this priority in this next session of our 
Congress and as we embark upon many of the things that we have laid out 
in terms of things that we want to accomplish and the goals, there are 
a number of us, many of my colleagues in the freshman class who are 
here today to speak to this issue, who in the course of their campaigns 
talked about what we can do to come up with a Tax Code that is simple, 
that is fair, that lowers the overall tax burden on American businesses 
and families.
  I too would issue the call today upon my colleagues in the Congress 
to make this a priority, so that in this session of Congress we do 
something that we have lacked the courage, the will before to do, and 
that is to address this behemoth Tax Code which clearly has gotten out 
of control.
  And I think that the people of this country, the men and women who 
fill out tax returns every day, those who are in business, those who 
are creating jobs and creating wealth, it was just alluded to earlier 
by my colleague from Pennsylvania, the enormous cost of capital in this 
country and how that compares with other industrialized nations in the 
world. And we do tax capital at a high rate and we tax labor at a high 
rate.
  I was reading recently as well that if you look at the number of 
people who file tax returns in America, 72 percent spend more on 
payroll tax than they do on income tax. And so we need to do something 
to allow the economic engine in America to continue to move our country 
forward, to create new jobs and make our economy all that it can be. I 
do not believe that we will see that happen if we continue to be bogged 
down and mired in this complex web that we know today as our U.S. Tax 
Code.
  And so along with my colleagues who have spoken before me and those 
who will follow, I today as well would ask that we make this a priority 
for the 105th Congress, that we be the Congress that is known and that 
our legacy be that we simplified and made sense of the American Tax 
Code.

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