[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 19 (Tuesday, March 3, 1998)]
[House]
[Page H735]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        TAX CODE TERMINATION ACT

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Oklahoma (Mr. Largent) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. LARGENT. Mr. Speaker, I would like to take a few minutes to 
address some of the comments and concerns that the President made 
yesterday at a speech when he was talking about the Tax Code 
Termination Act.
  This is a bill that myself and the gentleman from New York (Mr. 
Paxon) have introduced in the House, H.R. 3097, that simply does this: 
It sunsets the current Tax Code in the year 2001, December 31. It 
establishes a date certain that we sunset the entire Tax Code with the 
exception of the payroll deduction taxes on Social Security and 
Medicare.
  The President in his comment said that it would be irresponsible to 
sunset the Tax Code, that it would create an environment that would be 
uncertain and not predictable, and that it would have grave 
consequences on our economy.
  Let me just say, Mr. Speaker, that what is irresponsible is to 
continue to leave intact the Tax Code as we know it today, a Tax Code 
that literally is punitive, confusing, con founding. Even the experts 
do not understand; even the people that are paid to administer the 
current Tax Code do not understand it.
  Recent statistics show that the IRS, you call and ask a question 
about your individual tax return, 47 percent of the time the Internal 
Revenue Service gives you the wrong answer. The problem is when you go 
to court, they take you to Tax Court because you have submitted the 
wrong answer, you are guilty, even though you got the wrong answer from 
the Internal Revenue Service.
  The current code drains $200 billion a year from the U.S. economy. 
That is how much it costs to file all individual and business tax 
returns in the United States, over $200 billion.
  5.3 billion hours it takes from American businesses and individual 
taxpayers to file their tax return, 5.3 billion hours consumed by 
trying to meet the Tax Code.
  Let me just say I believe it is un-American and even immoral to have 
a Tax Code that punishes taxpayers, punishes businesses, and basically 
shouts at them, guilty, guilty, guilty. Not innocent. That is what our 
current Tax Code does.
  Let me just throw up a couple of charts for illustration purposes to 
highlight the problem. This first chart shows the number of words first 
in the Declaration of Independence, 1,300 words in the Declaration of 
Independence, the words that define the moral vision of our national 
government, 1,300 words in the Declaration of Independence.

                              {time}  1800

  In the Bible, the holy Bible, the word of God, 773,000 words in the 
Bible. But take the IRS tax code and all of the case law that supports 
the tax code, 2.8 million words in the IRS tax code, and the case law 
to support the IRS tax code. That is wrong. We can do better.
  The next chart, I think, highlights why we need to sunset the current 
tax code. Right here, what you see is two lines rising precipitously 
since 1964. The orange line you see is the words in the U.S. tax code. 
The actual code itself contains 800,000 words. From 1964 it quadrupled 
to 1993 from 200,000 to 800,000.
  Members will notice that the number of lobbyists in Washington, D.C. 
also went from just over 10,000 to 70,000 in that same period of time. 
The beauty of the tax code Termination Act is this: that we have a 
national election for the next President in the year 2000. The tax code 
will be sunset 1 year after that election. So what we will end up 
having is, if the tax code Termination Act is passed, essentially a 
national referendum on replacing the tax code.
  You have three candidates, A, B, C, from parties A, B, and C. You are 
a taxpayer and you go to hear them speak, or they are debating. The 
first question you are going to ask if this bill is passed, the tax 
code Termination Action, is, ``Sir, if I vote for you for President, 
what will the tax code look like once you become President, 1 year 
after you take office?''
  So we will have a national referendum on flat tax, national sales 
tax, the gentleman from Missouri (Mr. Gephardt's) modified flat tax, 
and every other variety therein. We will engage 265 million Americans 
in a debate at a national level on how we should replace the tax code, 
not the 70,000 lobbyists in Washington, D.C.
  Mr. Speaker, I will finish by saying that we need to encourage all 
Members of the House and the Senate to cosponsor the tax code 
Termination Act and see the death to this tax code. It is not too soon 
and hopefully it is not too late.

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