Mr. CRAIG. I rise today, on the eve of Tax Day, 2008, to discuss the State of our Nation's Tax Code . Only a few weeks ago, we debated the fiscal year 2009 budget resolution and some recurring themes very quickly emerged.
Over and over again, both sides of the aisle were speaking of the problems they heard about, the death tax and problems with the alternative minimum tax and the unfair tax advantage of the wealthy and the burden on the middle class and other problems that are systemic within America's Tax Code .
You know what we did about these problems? We only offered temporary solutions like we have offered for the last decade. Here is what is wrong with that type of thinking: There are not temporary problems that can be fixed with temporary solutions, they are fundamental problems that require fundamental changes in America's Tax Code.
Our current Tax Code is broken , and you saw Democrats and Republicans alike opining on the floor of the Senate during the debate over the budget resolution about taxes. We tried to fix it with a temporary measure, but we have served only to make things worse. There is exactly what we have done over the last good number of years.
Today's Tax Code is over 67,000 pages long, and it is growing. According to IRS estimates, taxpayers spend 6 billion hours annually trying to fit themselves into the Tax Code and over $265 billion in related compliance costs.
Ladies and gentlemen, fellow Americans, it is only going to get worse. Since the last major overhaul of the Tax Code in 1986, we have made 15,000 changes. That is right, since 1986, we have made 15,000 changes. That equates to a couple of changes to our Tax Code every day.
This nonstop tinkering has created a tax system that is overly complex, incredibly inefficient, and extremely unfair. We cannot continue down this unsustainable path of temporary fixes. We need to do fundamental reform to our Tax Code . We need a system that is simple and transparent and fair. We need to wipe the slate clean and start all over.
I am amazed we have not done the very fundamental aspects of what we need to do to fix the Tax Code . Our broken code does more than cost us money in compliance costs and a waste of time, it hurts us both socially and economically. Socially our Tax Code tells us when is the best time to marry, how many children we ought to have, how much to save, how much to invest, where to live, and even, to a degree, what time we should die in our lives that is the most economically advantaged to our estate.
That is what our Tax Code does. Economically, we waste billions of dollars that could have been reinvested in the economy. Instead, we employ some of America's brightest minds on innovation, while we waste them on finding ways to navigate through this phenomenally complex 67,000-page code.
Moreover, our complex Tax Code and high corporate tax rate are putting Americans out of business as we compete in a world around us, not just here in America but all over the world. Companies today are locating where they have a greater tax advantage.
I spent several years examining several different tax systems, and after examining the facts, I believe the best alternative to a broken Tax Code has been the very tax idea I introduced some years ago. That was a flat tax --no games, no gimmicks, a straightforward approach.
Our Tax Code is the workhorse pulling our economy, as I stated earlier, pulling us in the wrong direction. This horse that pulls our economy, the American Tax Code , has grown very lame. I grew up farming and ranching. Let me tell you, when the horse got lame, you took it out of the harness and put it in the barn. Sometimes, if it could not get well, you would simply have to dispose of it. How tragic that was.
But today's tragedy is the lame horse that is still in the harness, attempting to pull the Tax Code and the American people and the economy in the right direction when it is headed in the wrong direction.
So now as Americans file their taxes responsibly and dutifully, after they have navigated their way through a maze, and they have taken them to their accountant, and their accountant puts his or her final seal on it, and they send it in, if they were to ask an IRS agent: Did I do it right, there is no IRS agent today, no matter how schooled and how learned and how long-serving in the IRS, who can say: Yes, you have done it right. And that is not appropriate. The best they can tell you is that they think, in fact they guess, that you did it right.
That ought to be an embarrassment to our country, and more importantly it ought to be an embarrassment to America's policymakers. That is us, those who write the Tax Code of our country that drives our economy.
I yield the floor.