Congressmen and Senators prepared for the job?

No wonder the economy is in the tank. With 141 provisions in the tax code that are temporary and requiring constant congressional maintenance, no business nor corporation can plan beyond a year or two. That's just crazy.

Perhaps as a requirement for admission to congress, each member should be required to take at least one business overview course. Clearly, they focused on social studies in school (and probably had a Marxist teacher), not accounting nor math.


'Temporary' Tax Code Puts U.S. in a Lasting Bind - WSJ.com:

"This means that if the compromise passes largely intact, the U.S. will have no permanent regime governing levies on salaries, capital gains and dividends, the Social Security tax, as well as a slew of targeted breaks for families, students and other groups. This on top of dozens of corporate-tax provisions that already were subject to annual renewal.

The level of uncertainty, unusual for developed nations, complicates planning and discourages hiring and investment, many economists and corporate executives say.

'I haven't seen anything like it, and it's hard historically to find anything like' the current and pending negotiations, says Mortimer Caplin, an Internal Revenue Service commissioner in the Kennedy administration who at 94 is just three years younger than the income tax itself. 'This Congress has left an awful lot up in the air.'