In a move that Business Week calls something that might have been \u201cdreamed up by a 10-year-old after watching Thunderball,<\/em>\u201d the Senate Finance Committee plans to keep its members\u2019 ideas for new and renewed tax loopholes under wraps until 2064. Wait, what?<\/p>\n

The Senate Finance Committee is in charge of writing and rewriting the U.S. tax code. This year, the committee\u2019s leadership is going with what they\u2019re calling a \u201cblank-slate\u201d approach. They want to rewrite the tax code from scratch, wiping out all existing tax loopholes and giveaways, and either creating new ones or reconstituting some of the old favorites. The process they\u2019ve been using involves asking members of the committee to submit their ideas for new, revived and revised tax breaks.<\/p>\n

The deadline for these double-super-secret tax loophole preferences was July 26, 2013.<\/p>\n

According to The Hill<\/a>, here\u2019s how it works:<\/p>\n

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and the panel\u2019s top Republican, Sen. Orrin Hatch (Utah), assured lawmakers that any submission they receive will be kept under lock and key by the committee and the National Archives until the end of 2064.<\/p>\n

Deeming the submissions confidential, the Senate\u2019s top tax writers have said only certain staff members \u2014 10 in all \u2014 will get direct access to a senator\u2019s written suggestions. Each submission will also be given its own ID number and be kept on password-protected servers, with printed versions kept in locked safes.<\/p>\n

\u2026Under the confidential procedures set by the Finance panel, other committee staffers will only be allowed to handle senators\u2019 suggestions if supervised by at least of the 10 authorized staffers.<\/p>\n

Both the Democratic and Republican sides will receive a copy of a submission, and authorized staffers are supposed to log when copies of those proposals are made, who made them and how many.<\/p>\n

The submissions can be released publicly, the memo says, if they\u2019re scrubbed of any way of identifying the senator behind them.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Ostensibly, the promise of secrecy is a way to encourage otherwise reluctant Senators to contribute their ideas–because it would be too scary to submit them with their names actually attached to them!<\/p>\n

Given the mess known as the U.S. Tax Code, starting over actually sounds like an intriguing\u2014if not totally practical\u2014idea. But the way they\u2019re going about it is about as undemocratic as it could possibly be: Committee members who submit their preferences have been assured that their ideas will be kept secret, to protect themselves from lobbyists and citizens who have other ideas.<\/p>\n

Right. It would be such a bother to have citizens\u2014constituents and taxpayers, that is\u2014know what their representatives are doing and saying regarding taxes. We need to kept our constitutionally elected representatives safe from public scrutiny.<\/p>\n

And, of course, secrecy will “protect” them from lobbyists. Really? You mean the lobbyists who suggest\u2014I mean dictate \u2014the very loopholes that Senators are proposing\u2014I mean protecting. Senators don’t want to be protected from lobbyists: Lobbyists pay for their campaigns, for gawd’s sake. We’re the ones who need protecting.<\/p>\n

Business Week<\/a> sums it up this way:<\/p>\n

\u2026Any senator with a tax plea so secret it has to be physically locked away is definitely, absolutely not requesting it for the voters.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What a notion: Senators have the right to conduct this essential, public business in the dark, and to hide their actions in some kind of digital vault until we\u2019re all practically, or actually, dead. \u00a0I was unhappy when the Warren Commission Report on the JFK assassination was locked away for 75 years, under the pretext of national security or some such thing. But this is beyond that. Sure, watching legislative sausage being made is ugly, but building in a\u00a0 complete\u00a0 lack of accountability is inexcusable. Baucus and Hatch should be embarrassed, and we should be outraged.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a move that Business Week calls something that might have been \u201cdreamed up by a 10-year-old after watching Thunderball,\u201d the Senate Finance Committee<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":25349,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[998,29,195,128,16,1675,946],"tags":[2011,2525,2511],"yoast_head":"\n