[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 163 (2017), Part 4]
[House]
[Pages 4985-4986]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1800
                               TAX REFORM

  (Mr. BIGGS asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute.)
  Mr. BIGGS. Mr. Speaker, we know the Tax Code is excessively 
complicated and takes too much money from Americans, thus we overhauled 
the United States Tax Code.
  Over 30 years ago, President Ronald Reagan signed the last major tax 
reform package. To put this in perspective, this was before the world 
wide web went live to the public, more than 10 years ago before 
``google'' was a verb, and visiting a Blockbuster was the best way to 
rent a movie. America is vastly different than it was then, yet our Tax 
Code has largely stayed the same.
  As we bring our Tax Code into the 21st century, we must simplify the 
code. The U.S. Tax Code is over 3 million words long, and Americans 
spend billions of hours and hundreds of billions of dollars complying 
with Federal tax requirements each year. Imagine if that time and money 
were spent on innovation and job creation instead. As we work to shrink 
taxes and erase the excessive compliance rules, we must also make sure 
that the taxes we collect are spent according to constitutional 
constraints.
  We must propose a plan that will better serve individuals, families, 
and businesses across the country. We must introduce legislation that 
lowers taxes, reduces the corporate tax rate, minimizes government 
interference in the free market, and eases the overall cost to 
taxpayers to fully comply with the system.

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