Dan Rostenkowski

Zip, zero, zilch, nada.

Well, he, he talks about the tax reform that, that took place under, uh, Ronald Reagan and, uh, who was it? It was, uh, Dan Rostenkowski on the Democratic side a- at that point in time.

And what they managed to do was get rid of loopholes, get rid of nonsense, and move the ball forward.

And it started under Reagan and then y- under Bill Clinton.

Uh, not a commission.

There was a members appointed, bipartisan, uh, a chairman and ranking member from the three money committees, Appro- Ways and Means finance and budget, and leadership.

And so there were about 20 people sitting around a table with presidential leadership, and they reached a compromise on how to reduce the budget deficit by 500 billion over a five-year period, and that's what I think it takes.

I mean, I was educated under the chairman of Ways and Means, Dan Rostenkowski, who said, "It is members that need to make this.

Members need to own it." And I think it's gotta be a compromise between Republicans and Democrats.

I think regular order legwork in the sense I think this compromise, along with presidential leadership, again, they need to make an agreement, and then that agreement needs to be, um, pushed through Congress in the normal legislative process.

No.

He beat, beat Rostenkowski, and-

Oh, yeah.

Okay

And there was a commission, not a commission.

There was a members appointed bipartisan, uh, a chairman and ranking member from the three money committees, the probes ways and means finance and budget and leadership.

And so there were about 20 people sitting around the table with presidential leadership.

And they reached a compromise on how to reduce the budget deficit by $500 billion over a five-year period.

And that's what I think it takes.

I mean, I was educated under the chairman of Ways and Means, Dan Rostenkowski, who said it is members that need to make this.

Members need to own it.

And I think it's got to be a compromise between Republicans and Democrats.

Well, I think the bigger problem, if I may, and I'm not saying that's not the problem, the problem is the tax code from the two tax cuts of Bush to the two under President Trump has basically corrupted a system that went from creating wealth to preserving wealth, and people are gaming the system.

You need a Ronald Reagan, Dan Rostenkowski, Bob Packwood-

Republicans-

... consolidating close

So different.

And the thing that made the 1986 tax reform bill such an interesting story, you had Ronald Reagan as president and Dan Rostenkowski, a Democrat, as head of the tax writing committee and Tip O'Neill as the head of Congress.

The ideological difference between those two was as great as the ideological difference between Donald Trump and Nancy Pelosi.

But you had an infrastructure that was designed to try and find productive solutions that were good for people and meld them out of these partisan impulses.

it goes so deep.

I mean, one of the interesting things about that time when I was working on this was you had these nonpartisan professionals.

Like there was a guy named Ron Perlman, who was Ronald Reagan's top tax writing official in the Treasury Department and later left and became Dan Rostenkowski's head of the Joint Tax Committee.

So the same guy worked on both sides of the aisle.