October 10, 1978
Page 35244
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, since we have just enacted another out year tax reduction, I feel I have an obligation to present to the Senate the tax consequences in the out years of what the Senate has already done to this tax bill.
As the bill came out of committee, the tax bill would have reduced revenues in fiscal year 1979 by $20.5 billion. That includes $8.2 billion representing extensions of current law and new tax reductions totaling $12.3 billion for a total of $20.5 billion.
Those provisions in 1983 would have amounted to the following: $23.4 billion as the cost of the extensions of current law, and $42.5 billion as the 1983 cost of the new reductions. That is a total of $65.9 billion on an annual basis in 1983.
What we have done up to now is this: The fiscal year 1979 cost at this point is $21.7 billion. The 1983 cost is $144 billion compared to the $65.9 billion 1983 cost of the committee bill. So we have added roughly $80 billion of tax reductions in fiscal year 1983 as of this moment. We found a wide open door to enacting tax reductions, increasing tax losses and escaping the discipline of the current fiscal year, but only by playing with effective dates so that the full cost is reflected in future fiscal years. We are going to worry about them, apparently, when we get to them.
I put this into the RECORD not for the purpose of influencing Senate opinion on Senator CHURCH'S amendment, but simply to get these figures into the RECORD at this point so Senators may contemplate them as they consider other amendments which may come before us today.