The Congress: The King's Bill

By the time the U.S. Senate got through with it, the 1962 tax revision bill was not even a kissin' cousin to what the Kennedy Administration originally asked for. The Senate Finance Committee made precisely 174 changes in it, and most of them were upheld on the Senate floor. Viewing the ragged remnants, Treasury Secretary Douglas Dillon swallowed bravely, insisted that the bill was still "a significant first step toward the reform of our present out moded tax laws." But maybe Wisconsin's Democratic Senator William Proxmire put it better. Said he bitterly:...