More broadly, we are going to have to examine the safety net programs to make sure they are poised to catch the families before they fall even more, especially in the areas of unemployment benefits, child care assistance, and foster care.

The tax relief that this Congress has given now in terms of four tax cuts has overwhelmingly gone to the people at the very top of the income scale in America.

The alternative minimum tax was designed to prevent the very wealthiest Americans from overusing certain tax benefits to avoid most of their tax burden.

It is easy to talk about tax simplification, and we all know it is very difficult to accomplish; but for the last three Congresses, I have offered a tax simplification bill that would include a paid-for repeal of alternative minimum tax.

But what is striking about this, in a town that often talks about tax cuts, we could quite easily, Republicans and Democrats working together, do something that everybody in America desires, and that is a simplification of our Tax Code.