June 27, 1973
Page 21669
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, I have listened to some very familiar arguments about the undesirability of attaching a tax amendment to this bill, about the undesirability of the Senate's considering a tax amendment without a committee recommendation or report, and about the undesirability of the Senate's adopting a provision that the Senator from Louisiana is convinced the House cannot be persuaded to take.
I doubt very much that what the Senator from Massachusetts has done this afternoon comes to the Senator from Louisiana as a novel and surprising use of the parliamentary rules. I would be very much surprised if the Senator from Louisiana has not himself followed the route that is being followed by the Senator from Massachusetts.
I think every freshman Senator ought to be given a handbook of stock arguments to be used or rejected, depending upon what his own parliamentary circumstances may be.
We can all agree that the committee process is a very useful one and should be relied upon to develop and digest legislative ideas for the consideration of the Senate. But to argue, from that premise, that never, under any circumstances, should an amendment which has had such treatment be considered seriously on the Senate floor is to fly in the face of hundreds of precedents that I have seen on the Senate floor and in which the Senator from Louisiana himself has participated over these years.
Mr. LONG. Mr. President, will the Senator yield?
Mr. MUSKIE. I yield.
Mr. LONG. I am sure the Senator would not speak with such authority if he knew what he was saying. What tax bill have I ever attached to such a bill?
Mr. MUSKIE. The Senator knows full well what I mean. There may not be an exact precedent for the Senator's doing exactly this, but what I am saying is that I would be surprised if the Senator has never used the opportunity of advocating the attachment of an amendment – an amendment, which has not been considered in some committee – to a vehicle that hopefully would pass through the Senate in order to advance a legislative objective in which be believed.
I am not an authority on the Senator's legislative record and voting record, so if he says that he has never done so, I will, of course, take his word for it. I am simply making the point that the technique used by the Senator from Massachusetts is a very familiar one. It is a technique that has been accepted, and it is a technique that has been responsible for enacting important legislation.
Mr. LONG. If I understood the Senator's remarks, he said I had done the same thing that is being done now. I am complaining about a tax bill being put on a non-tax bill. The Senator said I did that. He should not say it if he does not know it, and if he says it he should document it.
Mr. MUSKIE. The Senator is now in the position of distorting what I said
Mr. LONG. I did not hear the Senator.
Mr. MUSKIE. I said the Senator now finds himself in the position of distorting what I said. The Senator and I are belaboring a meaningless point and taking time unnecessarily, and I doubt that the Senator can prove his rebuttal that this is such an unusual legislative procedure: To offer a substantive amendment that was not considered in committee to an appropriate vehicle that happens to be passing through the Senate. If the Senator challenges that–
Mr. LONG. If the Senator says I did something, he ought to be able to prove it and document it. Otherwise he should not say I did it.
Mr. MUSKIE. The Senator's sensitivities seem to be over-sharp this afternoon. I said that I would be surprised if the Senator had not done something like this in the past. I apologize to the Senator.
Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, the Senator from Maine was perhaps thinking of 1966, when the Senate was considering the Foreign Investors Tax Act. The Senator from Louisiana offered the dollar checkoff to finance Presidential election campaigns. That was certainly a new concept and a new idea, yet it was a non-grievance rider on another bill.
Mr. LONG. Mr. President, will the Senator yield, on my time?
Mr. MUSKIE. May I respond? I recall supporting the Senator's efforts at that time.
Mr. LONG. Mr. President, will the Senator yield, on my own time, at that point?
Mr. MUSKIE. I was trying to make an argument
Mr. LONG. Would the Senator mind yielding to me for a moment?
Mr. MUSKIE. I will yield the floor, but I was trying to answer the substance of the argument. So, lest we lose sight of the fact that–
Mr. LONG. I will be glad to yield on my time.
Mr. MUSKIE. I do not want to take more than 3 or 4 minutes to make a substantive argument.
Mr. LONG. The Senator from Massachusetts directed the Senator from Maine's attention to the fact that I had offered a tax amendment on a tax bill, and the tax amendment I offered on a tax bill was one which had been the subject of rather extensive hearings.
What I am suggesting is that if the Senator wants to propose a tax amendment, he propose it on a tax bill – and we are going to have a tax bill – to which it is germane, and as to which, if amendments are agreed to, we have a chance to have them accepted in conference.
All I am urging that the Senator do with the amendment is to offer the amendment on the proper bill and afford the proper committee an opportunity to look at the amendment, study it, and compare it to other proposals on the same provision in the tax code. There are recommendations on tax reform sent to us by the President and there will be those recommended by the House in the bill it will send us.
Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I yield 5 minutes to the distinguished Senator from Maine.
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, I am pleased the Senator made that point. I was undertaking to answer it when I got sidetracked. I support the notion of orderly consideration of legislation of this kind. I support the notion of committee hearings, committee deliberations, and committee recommendations. However, now let us consider what is perhaps a wiser course to follow in this case.
Last year in the presidential campaign, in which for a short time I was involved, there was no issue more visible across this country or closer to the average citizen than this issue of tax reform. It was raised by all the candidates – including a Presidential candidate from the region the Senator from Louisiana comes from – Governor Wallace. And I give him credit for raising it. He knew that the people were concerned. He forced the rest of us to come to grips with it. And we did.
I put a task force together of experts in the business, economic, and tax fields to develop alternative sets of tax reforms for me to consider. I know that the other candidates did the same.
And we spoke out about tax reform. The President of the United States promised tax reform.
That was among the most visible issues in the campaign. It was an issue that had been ignored last year. Tax reform had a very low profile in Congress.
I prepared for this Congress. It was in January of this year that I made a major tax reform speech in the Senate.
I testified as well before the Ways and Means Committee of the House, as part of that committee's comprehensive hearings. Others did the same. The Ways and Means Committee, over a period of many weeks heard all sides of the arguments on most major tax reform issues.
Yet, today there is still a lack of any feeling of urgency about tax reform. It has been postponed by the Ways and Means Committee of the House. And there is not such a sense of urgency in the Senate as to give us much confidence that it will be seriously considered.
So it is in this context that some of us have been looking for an opportunity to raise the issue on the Senate floor and to see whether there is any sentiment for it, to begin to stimulate debate, and to begin to arouse public interest. We hope that perhaps we can, with the introduction of this amendment, move on to a meaningful program of tax reform.
That, I say to my distinguished colleague from Louisiana, is a legitimate reason to offer the amendment this afternoon.
Why this one? The minimum tax was considered in the House hearings. There was a full day of consideration. And there was substantial evidence produced that the minimum tax should be reformed.
The Senator from Massachusetts (Mr. KENNEDY) and the other 15 cosponsors of the amendment, including myself, believe that there is merit in this reform proposal. It is supported by past hearings. And it is supposed by our studies.
Because the inequity this amendment would correct is a part of tax reform that was supposed to close a loophole, some have argued that the amendment is not needed. I say to the Senator that it is possible for a loophole to continue to exist within a loophole we had thought we had closed.
The Senator from Louisiana himself estimated a revenue gain of, I believe, of about $580 million from this amendment. That revenue loss is, in my judgment, unjustified. It is for that reason that we offer this proposal this afternoon.
Mr. President, I hope that the Finance Committee does soon conduct a thorough study of tax reform. But today we have an opportunity for the Senate to indicate its interest in tax reform and, by its vote, to give a rousing sendoff to such an effort.
A vote for the Kennedy amendment is a minor one, a small one. Some may say that there is not much interest in tax reform in the Senate this year. That is what we want to find out.
Tax preferences, for whatever social or economic purpose they were enacted, represent the expenditure of public funds in the same way as appropriations do.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. McGOVERN). The time of the Senator from Maine has expired.
Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I yield an additional 3 minutes to the Senator from Maine.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maine is recognized for an additional 3 minutes.
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, tax preferences get written into law and are never examined again until the Congress decides to stand up to those who have vested interests in such preferences.
And now is the time for us to stand up and demand this examination – and the reform it would produce.
Mr. President, finally, I would like to commend my distinguished colleague from Wisconsin, Senator NELSON, for the work he has done – in this Congress as in past Congresses – to bring tax reform before the Senate. He has joined again in our effort today. I applaud his continued dedication to this critical issue.
Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I yield 2 minutes to the Senator from Indiana.