Word: rostenkowski
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...last week what couldn't be done cleared its last major hurdle. In a series of tense meetings that began Tuesday night and wound up shortly before 5 a.m. Saturday, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Bob Packwood and House Ways and Means Chief Dan Rostenkowski compromised on the last significant differences between the versions passed by the House last December and the Senate in June. Then came a day of nerve-jangling negotiations selling the deal to the other 20 members of the House-Senate conference committee (ten from each chamber). Finally the full committee gave its stamp of approval Saturday...
...lasting legacies of Ronald Reagan's presidency," Treasury Secretary James Baker exulted late last week. "During his time in office, he has brought the top individual rate down from 70%. That is an extraordinary achievement." There was enough credit to go around. Said an exultant Rostenkowski: "The political process works. This tax bill brings a sense of justice to the way we tax income...
...first wanted not to reform but simply to slash. In the process, however, he unintentionally helped boost the case for reform. When he sent his three-year, 25%-rate-cut plan to Congress in 1981, the Administration got trapped in a bidding war with Democrats led by, among others, Rostenkowski. So many breaks for business were loaded into the bill that it became a monstrosity. To take the worst example, real estate profited so enormously that a 1983 Treasury study concluded that the industry as a whole not only was paying no tax but was actually being subsidized by Washington...
...conferees repeatedly got hung up, mostly on what Rostenkowski / defined simply as the question of "who benefits and who pays." Many of the legislators had pet industries whose breaks they fought bitterly to protect. One example: Gephardt, of all people, supported Republican Senator John Danforth in arguing for continued special treatment of the profits of defense contractors (some of the biggest are based in their home state, Missouri...
...both would entirely remove from the tax rolls some 6 million people below or just above the poverty line, and both would revive the so-called marriage penalty by ending the special deduction for families with two wage earners. Another good omen for the conference is that Packwood and Rostenkowski, who have had some testy exchanges in the past, are now talking friendly compromise. Says the Chicago Congressman: "The challenge is to take the best reforms from each" bill. Echoes the Oregon Senator: "Neither one of us will have pride of authorship." But the differences between the two bills...