Shared Sacrifice in Resolving the Budget Deficit-Motion to Proceed

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President, last week, the House Speaker--Speaker Boehner--and President Obama and his administration were both calling for comprehensive tax reform as part of a large budget deal. Obviously, today, that seems to have lost some momentum, and I wanted to start this afternoon by saying tax reform is too important to abandon after 48 hours' worth of discussion.

To his credit, Chairman Conrad recognizes that, and certainly that is what I heard this weekend when, similar to the distinguished Presiding Officer, I was home and had the chance to travel across eastern Oregon, stopping in small towns. I think there is a keen awareness that it is not possible to cut our way out of this economic challenge; that we also have to grow. We have to grow. We have to make growth-oriented changes in tax law.

That is what the Conrad budget clearly offers a wide berth to do. In fact, I am of the view that progrowth tax reform, for example, is one of the few ways to generate revenue that both Democrats and Republicans will support. When you put people to work--and we have millions and millions of our fellow citizens out of work today--those are folks who can, in the private sector, start paying taxes again. That is what happened after the last major tax reform bill in 1986. In those 2 years--the 2 years after major tax reform--6.3 million new jobs were created in the private sector. We have an opportunity to do that again, and the Conrad budget offers a wide berth in which to do it.

So you generate revenue--revenue that both Democrats and Republicans can support--and create jobs in the private sector the way Democrats and Republicans have said they want to do. Certainly, it is pretty clear, as of today, there isn't anything as promising in the economic toolshed for long-term growth as tax reform. The fact is, a lot of other alternatives have been tried. Certainly, the Federal Reserve has done its share. We have the Recovery Act. There have been a variety of steps that have been taken.

My colleague from Oregon, in my view, has done yeomen's work on the effort to make sure homeowners--which is an enormous economic problem--have additional time to work through the very challenging situations millions are facing in the housing market. So we have thrown a lot of economic tools at this huge challenge, but we obviously have a lot more to do. I don't see any more promising path--no more promising path--than tax reform for the long-term economic growth this country needs. The Conrad budget offers a wide berth in order to tap that opportunity.

The fact is, we understand what needs to be done in terms of tax reform. The fundamental language--the principles of that kind of reform--are laid out in the Conrad budget. We ought to go in there, clean out a score of these special interest tax loopholes, use that money to hold down rates for everybody, and keep progressivity. Those are the three key principles.

A number of my colleagues have spoken. I know my friend from Arizona, with whom I serve on the Finance Committee, Senator Kyl, in a very fine op-ed piece he wrote in the Wall Street Journal not too long ago, talked about tax reform built around exactly those principles--cleaning out the loopholes, holding down the rates, and, to his credit, Senator Kyl specifically talked about the need to ensure progressivity in the Tax Code.

Senator Coats and I have introduced legislation that picks up on those key principles of the 1986 tax reform legislation. In fact, we modernize the code in line with that kind of thinking--certainly important to do because there have been thousands and thousands of tax changes made since 1986. So it is certainly time to go in there and trim out all those unnecessary special interest tax breaks, and we can do it in a way that will create jobs.

For example, right now, in the Federal Tax Code, there are actually incentives to export jobs out of the United States. Say that to yourself--export jobs out of the United States. What we want to do is export goods out of the United States. In rural Oregon this weekend, the farmers were telling me about how they want to get their agricultural products into Asia and other markets around the world. So we can grow things here, make things here, add value to them here and ship them somewhere. That is what we would like to be exporting. Instead, under the tax law, there is actually an incentive to export jobs.

When you set up shop overseas and you are doing business overseas, you get to defer your American taxes. So what Senator Coats and I seek to do--and this is something I think is even more important today than it was a quarter century ago because of the global economic challenge--is to take that incentive that now goes for exporting jobs out of the United States and we would use those very same dollars to dramatically slash rates for companies that offer what I call red, white, and blue jobs--jobs in this country. The Conrad budget offers a very substantial berth for taking that kind of approach in tax reform, where he specifically calls for lowering tax rates for American businesses. I particularly wish to see that done because of the message I heard this last weekend, where folks specifically, without my even mentioning tax reform, talked about the need to keep jobs here at home.

We are going to, over the next few days, see, of course, the negotiations with the President and the Congressional leadership go forward. Chairman Conrad and other members of the Budget Committee will be out discussing these issues as well. But I just hope, No. 1, the cause of tax reform is seen as far too important to give up on after only a 48-hour flurry of interest and everybody then saying: Well, I guess we will have to do it another time. The time to make sure it is done is now.

Senator Coats and I said earlier this month that what we ought to do--recognizing that you can't write a complete tax reform bill between now and August 2--is to get a commitment, lock in a strategy, to do comprehensive tax reform in the fall and early next year. That alone would send, in my view, a positive and bipartisan message to the financial markets of this country that there are going to be some changes. So what we need is a roadmap for economic growth.

There are other features of the Conrad budget I think make a lot of sense. I am particularly pleased about the opportunities for investment in infrastructure--roads and bridges. Certainly, that would provide an opportunity for something that has worked in the past--the Build America Bonds program, which has been so successful in our State. I think Senator Kerry's ideas for an infrastructure bank are excellent ones. I support those as well. The best thing about that approach is we know we have to find a way in our consumer-driven society to start stimulating demand--demand for goods and services.

There are few economic multipliers in our country for the short term, such as transportation. So the Conrad budget that puts a premium on those kinds of approaches in the short-term makes a lot of sense for me as we look to the longer term, which I would define as the opportunity to set this country on a progrowth economic strategy, with tax reform in the forefront in a way that helps our economy to be both fairer and more efficient.

We will also see a lot of other benefits.

It was brought up to me over the weekend at home, in eastern Oregon, matters we have talked about before, such as the alternative minimum tax. Talk about something that just defies common sense: the idea that the alternative minimum tax would force middle-class people, people making $60,000, $70,000, $80,000 a year, to fill out their taxes twice using two separate systems just defies any semblance of sanity.

So referring, again, to what happened this weekend, are we really going to tell American taxpayers getting clobbered by the alternative minimum tax that after 2 days' worth of discussion about tax reform we are just going to walk away and pursue some other topic? That doesn't make any sense to me. Certainly, Chairman Conrad's budget, which does, as I have indicated, provide a broad berth for tax reform, makes it clear that he shares our view.

So, finally, if we have in front of us, as we will with progrowth tax reform, the opportunity to create jobs in the private sector, generate revenue in a way that Democrats and Republicans can agree on, make ourselves more competitive in tough global markets, and do it in a way that brings the political parties together, I think it is clear that has the fundamentals of what can take this country's economy in a better and healthier direction.

I want it understood that in spite of what happened this weekend, in spite of the sense that maybe tax reform is going to be put off yet again, I am not going to give up for a minute. We are going to have another hearing that is going to be very important this week--Chairman Baucus, Chairman Camp, the Finance Committee, the Ways and Means Committee getting together to talk about tax reform. So we know what needs to be done. Now it is a question of having the political will to go forward.

I simply want to say to the President, and I think I can say to the Senate today--Senator Coats and I--despite the idea that this is too hard to do, that it can't be done now, let's put it off for another time, we are going to come back to this floor and say again and again: It has been done. We need to do it now when there are so few other tools in the economic toolshed. It would be wrong to walk away after this brief flurry of interest in something that is so fundamental to the economic well-being of millions of our people.

I yield the floor and note the absence of a quorum.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source