[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 151 (2005), Part 18]
[House]
[Page 24380]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                   TAX COMMISSION MISSES OPPORTUNITY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Pursuant to the order of the House of 
January 4, 2005, the gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Linder) is recognized 
during morning hour debates for 5 minutes.
  Mr. LINDER. Mr. Speaker, the President's tax commission has completed 
its work and sent its report to the Treasury Department. When this 
started 8 or 9 months ago, I said as often as I could that I wish you 
would not appoint a commission because the only thing that I have seen 
commissions do in my lifetime is raise taxes. Only on the rich, of 
course.
  Well, guess what: This commission has decided to raise taxes only on 
the rich. They chose not to do anything bold. They took a tax system 
that you and I have come to know and love and kept it in place and did 
nothing to do the exciting things they could have done. The FairTax 
bill, which I have introduced, would have changed much of what we know 
about the tax system. For example, the commissioners knew that 22 
percent of what we currently pay for at retail represents the embedded 
cost of the current IRS. You are paying the tax cost and compliance 
cost of every one of the thousands of corporations and businesses that 
it took to make that house. The only way a business can pay a bill is 
through price and consumers are the only taxpayers in the world. They 
chose to ignore that and leave us disadvantaged in the global economy 
with a 22 percent tax component in our price system. The FairTax, by 
getting rid of the IRS, would have ended that. The Tax Foundation has 
concluded that in 2003 we spent $203 billion just complying with the 
Tax Code. We spent 6.6 billion man-hours. They chose to ignore that. 
Getting rid of that cost would add a 2 or $3 trillion tax cut over 10 
years to create jobs and create wealth. They chose to ignore that. The 
FairTax, by getting rid of the IRS, would have eliminated that.
  They knew, as we know, that currently 2 to $3 trillion is in the 
underground economy, not paying taxes. They chose to leave that in 
place and not change that by keeping the IRS in place. The FairTax, by 
getting rid of the IRS and taxing consumption, would have taxed the 
underground economy.
  They knew, as we know, that there is today in offshore financial 
centers, in dollar denominated deposits, $10 trillion. These are 
deposits that want to be in dollars for safety and they want secrecy. 
If we were to get rid of the IRS, those dollars would be in our markets 
and our banks and our credit unions. And we would not have the 
bankruptcies of Delta and Northwest and United and future bankruptcies 
to come because their pension plans are not up to par because the 
driving up of the markets with those $10 trillion would have saved 
them. They chose to ignore that and did nothing bold.
  The President has made a very clear case that Social Security can 
drown us all. What he did not say was that Medicare was four times as 
bad as Social Security. They constitute for us today and our 
grandchildren a $75 trillion problem. Let me put that in perspective 
for you. If you started a business on the day Jesus Christ was born and 
lost $1 million a day through yesterday, it would take you another 719 
years to lose $1 trillion. $75 trillion.
  The FairTax changes the way we gather money for Social Security. 
Instead of taxing 158 million workers to pay for the retirees, we tax 
300 million Americans every time they buy something and 50 million 
visitors to our shores to save those programs in 15 years by doubling 
the size of the economy in 15 years. The tax commission chose to ignore 
that.
  Mr. Speaker, it is sad to put all of that effort into play for so 
many months and come up with such a predictable result, which is to 
raise taxes on the wealthy. This is not going to change anything. They 
pointed out in an article in today's paper, two of the commissioners, 
that the last major simplification was in 1986 and they reduced two 
levels of taxation and eliminated many deductions. They further pointed 
out that it has been amended 15,000 times since then. Do they believe 
that future Congresses are not going to be the same if you have the 
income tax in place? I think they are wrong. I think they missed a 
wonderful opportunity to do something bold for our economy and 
something bold for our country and it saddens me.

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