Senator Collins Welcomes President's Call for Comprehensive Tax Reform

Press Release

U.S. Senator Susan Collins welcomed comments from the President today indicating he would support a broad overhaul of the tax code.

In a speech on the Senate floor last week, Senator Collins expressed her support for extending the 2001 and 2003 tax relief laws for all Americans for two more years, and she suggested leaders on both sides of the aisle use this time to reform the nation's tax code.

Senator Collins said the two year extension is "essentially what I recommended to this body in September, when I urged the Senate to take up legislation to extend the 2001 and 2003 tax relief for two years. That's a middle ground - surely we ought to be able to come together and embrace this compromise. That will get us through the recession and send a strong signal to the business community to invest and create jobs. And here's my suggestion of what we should do during that two-year period: we could undertake comprehensive tax reform to make our system fairer, simpler, and more pro-growth."

Last night, the President endorsed the two-year extension in a potential compromise with Congress. Today in a White House news conference, the President acknowledged that the current tax code is neither fair nor efficient.

"I am pleased that the President is willing to compromise to help ensure that American families will not face an automatic tax increase of nearly $2.7 trillion as they ring in the New Year," said Senator Collins today. "I wholeheartedly agree with the President that we must use the next two years of tax-rate certainty productively to rewrite the tax code to make it simpler, fairer, and more pro-growth."

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