[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 168 (Thursday, November 1, 2007)]
[Senate]
[Pages S13647-S13648]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        DOING THE WORK OF TODAY

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, yesterday, the Acting Commissioner of 
the Internal Revenue Service sent a letter to Congress warning about 
the consequences of not addressing the AMT tax right away. She said 
that if we don't do something about this middle class tax hike by 
December, as many as 50 million Americans, more than a third of all 
U.S. taxpayers, will either get hit by a tax that was never meant for 
them or forced to wait months for a refund that many of them count on 
for their family budgets.
  Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the letter from Acting 
Commissioner Linda Stiff be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

                                       Department of the Treasury,


                                     Internal Revenue Service,

                                 Washington, DC, October 31, 2007.
     Hon. Charles B. Rangel,
     Chairman, Committee on Ways and Means, House of 
         Representatives, Washington, DC.
       Dear Mr. Chairman: Thank you for your letter clarifying 
     your plans to enact legislation addressing the alternative 
     minimum tax

[[Page S13648]]

     (AMT) through an indexed exemption amount for 2007 and 
     allowance of personal credits against the AMT. We appreciate 
     your commitment to pass AMT legislation as quickly as 
     possible.
       In anticipation of this legislation, the Internal Revenue 
     Service (IRS) has been taking every step possible to prepare 
     for the upcoming filing season. Your letter provides 
     additional information that will allow us to continue our 
     planning and design based on your proposed solution. It 
     should be noted, however. that key systems can only 
     accommodate one programming option without introducing 
     excessive risk to the filing season. We must ensure that our 
     systems are prepared to process returns under the law as it 
     exists now. Therefore, until the legislation is passed and 
     signed into law, our systems cannot be fully programmed for 
     the proposed AMT patch.
       We are committed to a successful filing season, which means 
     processing returns in a timely manner and issuing refunds to 
     the millions of Americans who expect and are entitled to 
     them. We are taking all steps and making every effort to be 
     prepared to implement legislation once it is passed and will 
     move swiftly upon enactment.
       However, even with the planning and design that your letter 
     facilitates, we still estimate a timeframe of approximately 
     10 weeks after enactment before we can process affected tax 
     returns. Accordingly, as noted in Secretary Paulson's letter 
     of October 23, 2007, we estimate that enactment of an AMT 
     patch in December could delay processing of returns for as 
     many as 50 million taxpayers and could delay issuance of 
     approximately $75 billion in refunds.
       We look forward to continuing to work with you to deliver a 
     successful filing season. If you have any questions or need 
     additional information, please contact me at (202) 622-9511.
                                                   Linda E. Stiff,
                                              Acting Commissioner.

  Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, when most people get a letter from the 
IRS, they get scared. But the Democrats didn't even blink. They don't 
seem all that concerned about forcing 50 million Americans to write an 
interest-free loan to the Government in the form of unpaid tax returns 
worth about $75 billion--75 billion dollars. That is more than the 
gross domestic product of a hundred different countries--just sitting 
in the Treasury instead of the bank accounts and pockets of Americans 
who earned it.
  Now, if this were the only thing Senate Democrats were 
procrastinating over, Americans would have reason enough to be angry. 
But it is not. It is just the latest in a string of core duties they 
promised they would address before election day but put back on the 
shelf after all the votes were counted.
  Instead of fulfilling their campaign promises, they launched into a 
series of legislative misadventures that have put us 5 weeks into the 
new fiscal year with the same number of appropriations bills we started 
with, which is zero, a Justice Department with more empty offices than 
the Dirksen building in August, and no indication from anyone on the 
other side that any of this will change.
  Regarding appropriations, the President has already said he will veto 
spending bills that exceed the budget request. Yet Democrats will now 
knowingly pass a Labor/HHS bill that exceeds the President's budget by 
billions of dollars and attach it to the MilCon/Veterans appropriations 
bill. We already know the result. These bills are coming right back to 
the Senate for a do-over. This is a waste of time, and just more of the 
same from a party that has been intent all year on using this Chamber 
as a stage for political theater rather than a workshop to actually get 
things accomplished.
  Over at the Justice Department, Democrats have been clamoring for new 
leadership all year. The senior Senator from New York was the loudest 
of them all. More than 5 months ago, he told us ``the Nation needs a 
new Attorney General, and it can't afford to wait.'' The President 
responded in good faith by nominating the very man the senior Senator 
from New York recommended for the job.
  Yet America has now waited longer for a vote on Michael Mukasey than 
on any other Attorney General nominee in decades. They have waited more 
than 40 days now. Compare that to Janet Reno, whose confirmation came 
less than 2 weeks after she was named.
  Democrats have found plenty of time for votes that didn't matter. Now 
it is time to turn to votes that do. They found time for midnight votes 
on political Iraq resolutions. Now Americans are wondering when we will 
have a midnight vote to fix an error in the Tax Code that promises to 
leave more than one-third of them high and dry come April.
  They found time for a vote on how we felt about the last Attorney 
General. Now people want to know when we will have the midnight vote on 
restoring leadership at the Justice Department.
  They had the time to vote again and again to cut off funds to our 
troops in the field--voted on the Feingold amendment to cut off funds 
three times. Now Americans want to know when they will have a midnight 
vote to send the rest of the money to the troops--or on any one of the 
12 appropriations bills in a form that we can expect the President to 
sign.
  This fixation on political gamesmanship has come at a serious cost. 
What we are seeing here goes far beyond mismanagement. And the American 
people have caught on. For the sake of the taxpayers, for the sake of 
the justice system, for the sake of the men and women who wear the 
uniform, it is time to put politics aside and do the work of today.
  No more gimmicks, no more games. Time is short. The stakes are high. 
Let's get on with it.
  The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore. The majority leader is recognized.

                          ____________________