For folks from North Carolina, who think of Elizabeth Dole, who passed through here long enough to get elected as our Senator, as Senator Dole, I think of her husband as the real Senator Dole.
Bob Dole, when Chair of the Senate Finance Committee, was a great American, I thought. He was looking to protect his friends, but he didn’t mind taxing other people. That was the best the public could get back then, and may still be. The alternative is Don’t Tax Anybody, which calls for selling a lot of assets. Or going broke.
Newt Gingrich once called him the tax collector for the welfare state. Senator Bob Dole didn’t have the visceral anti-tax attitude that seems prevalent in today’s GOP. It’s not surprising that in 1982, when the idea of 280E, denying deductions for selling illegal drugs, came up, it came up in Bob Dole’s Finance Committee.
The Center for New Revenue 