mr. mcdermott: mr. speaker, i ask unanimous consent to revise and extend my remarks. the speaker pro tempore: without objection. mr. mcdermott: mr. speaker, this country faces a bravery and today i want to recognize the courageous patriotism of active duty army officer lieutenant colonel daniel davis who recently returned from his second tour in afghanistan. he traveled thousands of miles throughout the country patrolling with american troops in eight provinces and spoke to hundreds of afghan and american security officers and civilians about conditions on the ground. convinced that senior leaders of this war, both uniformed and civilian have intentionally and consistently misled the american people about the conditions in afghanistan, davis wrote an 84-page report challenging the military's assertion that the war in afghanistan has been a success. this report, which i read, was written at great risk to lieutenant colonel davis' military career and personal life and it forces us to confront uncomfortabl

mr. mcdermott is recognized. >> thank you, mr. chairman. i want the audience and witnesses to recognize this is a day in which we've all gathered here with sober faces for holy pictures. we are all for tax reform. everybody in this room is for tax reform. we're on the ways and means committee. we do tax reform. now mr. johnson has asked you, have you studied how low you can get the tax rate if you eliminated business tax expe expenditures and noall of thens with say they haven't. i want to center the study from joint tax which talks about what you'd really have to do if you're serious here. now, that study suggests roughly half of the cost of a seven point reduction from 35 down to 28 would come from the repeal of depleted accelerated depreciation. yet all the companies have said this is very important. don't take away our accelerated depreciation. so you want to retain that. that means you can finance about a 3%, 3.5% reduction. this report says you're going to bring it down to 28% you're going to have to come up with $960 billion of which

mr. mcdermott: well, mr. speaker, tomorrow's groundhog's day. we've been in session this year for one month and this is the first day of the second month, and we've had two legislative days and haven't done one single thing for the working americans in this country. now, this bill is the whole reason why the occupy wall street movement is out there and why the opinion of the performance of the congress is so low. this bill has absolutely nothing to do with creating jobs, training the unemployment, helping businesses grow or moving the country forward. it is about the ninth time we've brought a piece of so-called obamacare -- obama does care, you know -- they brought it out here and they keep trying to repeal it which is not what the people want us working on. instead, the republicans are giving us just a bunch of press releases. i can see them going out of the offices now to the tea party all over the country, rile up the base, oh, yeah and nothing is being done for the people. the second problem is the republicans aren't being straight with the

mr. chairman. i want to clarify something that came up during dr. mcdermott's line of question. nd that is the joint tax analysis that was done. and mr. neubig pointed a couple things out but i think this bears emphasis, reemphasizing these facts about that specific report. first and foremost, the estimates are not complete. and secondly, they are not comprehensive. and, in fact, only 60 out of 150 measures have been scored, and those are preliminary. that consistently rate of 28%. so i'm optimistic that we can actually get to a lower rate once we have a full analysis of all these measures. so i think we need to keep that in mind, that the joint tax analysis is not comprehensive at this stage, and incomplete, and her committee will have to continue to work to get to that point. professor hanlon, we have all been very concerned about the vast number of temporary provisions in the tax code, and the uncertainty it's created that oftentimes these get renewed retroactively, creates a lot of problems. certainly from a compliance standpoint. i would like you to elaborate on how do deal

mr. chairman. i want to clarify something that came up during dr. mcdermott's o the joint tax analysis that was done. i want to reemphasize the stats about that report. the estimates are not complete and secondly, they're not comprehensive. in fact, only 60 out of 150 hav. and those are preliminary. and that gets us to a rate of 25%. i'm optimistic we can get to a lower rate once we have a full analysis of all these measures. so i think we need to keep that in mind the joint tax analysis is not comprehensive at this stage. and our committee wilpoint. professor hanlan, we've all been very concerned about the vast number of temporary provisions in the tax code and the uncertainly it's created. often times these get renewed retroacti retroactively. i would like you to elaborate on how do you deal from a financial accounting perspective. >> they're just unpredictable. it's hard for chaens to plan. it's hard for them to take long-term investments. again, it's hard for them to predict what the tax rate will be and they're benchmarked on that tax rate. i think it's ju

mr. chairman, i want to clarify something that came up during dr. mcdermott's line of questioning. that is the joint tax analysis that was done. we pointed a couple things out. i think this bears emphasis -- reemphasizing these facts about that specific report. first and foremost, the estimates are not complete and secondly, they're not comprehensive. in fact, only 60 out of 150 measures have been scored. those are preliminary. that gets us to a rate of 28%. i'm optimistic that we can get to a lower rate once we have a full analysis of all these measures. so i think we need to keep that in mind that the joint tax analysis is not comprehensive at this stage and incomplete. our committee will have to continue to work to get to that point. professor hanlon, we've all been considered about the uncertainty of the tax code. oftentimes things get renewed retroactively. it creates a lot of problems from a compliance standpoint. i would like you to elaborate on how do you deal from a financial accounting standpoint with these and talk about some of the problems that therein lie with tempora