Changed dramatically over the years. We may nevertheless find instructive some of the experiences of the early staff. Beyond the first years of the staff, the Research Task was more difficult. For my paper today, i was helped with some Key Developments that took place during the summer of 1927 when congress was out of session, ways and means and the first jtc chairman green was in iowa, and the small staff was in d. C. As a result, important issues were discussed by correspondence that has been preserved in the archives. Once the staff is established, more communication seems to occur within the staff, rather than with outsiders. And preservation of that information is much more haphazard. Some internal memos have no names or dates on them, and their importance is very hard to determine. The paper trail gets harder as the size of the staff grows, and some information is not memorialized at all. An additional difficulty, unless Joe Thorndike has worked out a special arrangement with the archivists, is that the staff papera from the Nixon Administration are on hold until 2024. I was told they may be cleansed of Tax Information and be divulged to the public until 2029 at the earliest. I have always been pretty good at arithmetic, and i can tell you although joe may be here to tell you that part of the story, at the 150th anniversary, i will not. Probably my Biggest Surprise was the completely unintended nature of the institution congress authorized in 1926. The house wanted to create a twoyear tax commission, Something Like the Tax Reform Panel established over a decade ago by the bush administration. In the early years, chairman green continued to refer to and treat the committee as a shortterm institution, even though the enabling sketch placed no time limit on its existence. All of his initial hires were temporary. He even expressed caution about a promising applicant giving up a good permanent position at the Treasury Department to take what green believed to be only temporary employment at the joint committee. Meanwhile, the senate seems to envision Something Like an oversight subcommittee. Certainly not an organization whose staff would become deeply involved in the tax legislative process. I mentioned in my paper that that result may have been influenced by greens election as the first chairman, rather than senator smoot. I was also surprised by the connection between the depletion allowance in the joint committee. In my article on the origins of the jct, i describe how the finance committee in 1918, with no professional Staff Support in the legislature, was totally snookered by a maritime lawyer into approving over the objections of the treasury the discovery depletion allowance, the forerunner of percentage depletion. The lawyer was working for an emergency federal energy agency, but he had no or little background in energy or tax. Theres a wonderful scene in the pertinent hearing where a lawyer is shown the oil and Gas Industries proposal. And he turns his nose up at it. Inadequate, he sniffs. Once the industry gets word of whats going on, they quickly get word to the senators that they are fully on board. Unfortunately, aside from being too generous, the provision is also impossible to administer. A concern that the maritime lawyer dismissed at the hearing. And those problems led to difficulties at the tax agency, a congressional investigation, and eventually, creation of the joint committee. The first chief of staff was a Natural Resource valuation engineerwho skills became somewhat obsolete once percentage depletion was approved in 1926. Im not sure whether the chairman understood that when he hired parker in that year. Discovery depletion, however, was still permissible for mind property, and parker wrote several early studies comparing the two provisions and exploring ways that some reform might be feasible. Some of you know that there is actually another very interesting connection between depletion and the joint committee. As herb janet told me a few years ago, during the 1950s, following one of a number of failed attempts to cut back on the depletion allowance, a joint Committee Staffer said despondently, there would be a man on the moon before congress would ever do anything about it. Sure enough, on july 21, 1969, or exactly one day after Neil Armstrong took his famous walk, the ways and Means Committee approved the first of a series of steps to limit the allowance. Another interesting, if not surprising matter, was to learn about the pretax code world. Something im confident to say no one here has ever experienced firsthand. In prior research, i had read through all of the early income tax statutes. And found them to be quite confusing. This made me curious to understand what a precode world was like. One way to conceptualize Congress Problem is to consider the voluminous footnote material appearing after almost every inclusion in the current code. If there werent a code, how would that law be preserved . One possibility, which congress generally followed, was to repeal all prior enactments, but to incorporate any still applicable prior law rules into the text of the current enactment. That meant that the current enactment generally contained all of the law. But just imagine how unruly some of those provisions became. The other possibility, which congress generally followed beginning in 1928, was to preserve all prior enactments, and then to include in the current enactment only the rule applicable to current and future years. This process permitted each new enactment to be fairly clean. But it meant that anyone interested in the prior law rule had to locate the applicable statutes and make sure, of course, that it still represented good law. As the number of enactments proliferated, the Research Task became increasingly challenging. And of course, without a code as positive law, amendments had to be made to the prior statutes, not to the code. We will have to hope that codofires could quickly incorporate the amendments into at least their prima facie version of the code. Bottom line for folks like john samuels and me, who sometimes bemoan the complexity of the tax law, the lesson may be, it could have been worse. Not surprisingly, i have not found any Economic Analysis in the early files. But i have found some early revenue estimates, and im sure they would provide a good laugh to the economists on the staff. The connections between Roswell Mcgill and collins stamm, the longestserving chief of staff by far, and the joint committee, were all unexpected. As Joe Thorndike has written, mcgill was indisputably one of the most important tax officials of the 1930s. But i have no idea how involved he was in the joint committees story. Mcgill had both a personal and professional connection with the joint committee. His personal involvement was that he was asked not once, but twice to join the staff. And had he accepted either opportunity, his 37 year career on staff might not have happened. A professional connection occurred in 1938 when, as undersecretary of the treasury, mcgill requested and obtained the third edition of the proposed code. But then, in a lengthy address he delivered just days later, he failed to say a single word about the staff codification efforts that were at that time stretching into their eighth year. In his speech, he discussed the benefits of codification, but focused attention only on an effort then going on in england, and suggested that the u. S. Might want to follow the same process as the british to codify its tax laws. I found this entire episode very curious. As i indicate in the paper, the explanation may have been the influence of herman oliphant, with treasury general counsel in 1939, and was apparently strongly opposed to codification. Of course, the main take away was congresses willingness to move ahead with this very technical piece of legislation, notwithstanding treasuries ambivalence. Given congresses prior experiences with convocation, and the general absence of any professional Committee Staff at the time, it may have been significant that congress proceeded with the bill. I think this event could be a milestone in helping to establish the staffs reputation in the legislature. Finally, i have accumulated much information about collin stamm, who appears to have been a fairly controversial fellow. In 1963, for example, the d. C. s correspondent for the new york times, wrote a lengthy profile about stamm. In 19 of the 20 persons interviewed, senator harry byrd being the lone exception, insisted upon anonymity, so they could speak candidly. During this period, stories began to appear in the press about how stamm was a conservative who was too sympathetic to business interests. Since some people on the outside, jeff bernbaum being a notable exception, do not understand very well the nature of the chief of staffs job. I plan to take a close look at these claims. Stamm was clearly no shrinking violet. He was once confronted in the market bya Senate Liberal who asked him which state he represented. Reportedly, stamm responded without blinking an eye, the united states. Stamm seems also to a been a person a very high integrity. And a real stickler for enforcing policies against gifts or other private benefits. On one occasion, a lobbyist advised he was forwarding a ham to the staff. Because this gift was perishable, stamm tried hard to prevent its delivery. Sending a series of increasingly desperate telegrams to the effect dont send that ham. Last, i plan to examine the famous episode involving the confirmation of the assistant secretary in 1961. The finance Committee Really grilled him, in part because of controversial articles he had written a few years earlier on the tax legislative process. Some believe that his treatment was also partly attributable to disagreements he had had with stamm in the legislative process. Thank you all very much for your kind attention. [applause] we had a couple of minutes, so i want to show a few pictures here. Here. Icture this is the first chief of staff. They had collaborated on a small book in 1935 on the british tax system, and although this picture is not dated, im assuming this was put together as part of the publicity for the publication. What i find particularly interesting is if you look at the background of the picture, it does appear to be a Typical OfficeBuilding Office that theyre sitting in. Just for your information, the staffs first offices in 1926 were in a partitioned area of the canon dining room. That was one choice. The other choice was a Basement Office in the capital. And the staff and chairman green thought that the partitioned office was at least a little more in the flow, if you will. The building that we now know of as long worth was opened in the spring of 1933. My records show that sometime in the summer or fall of that year, the staff moved into 1336 on the third floor. They moved into the First Floor Offices, or a First Floor Office in 1946. And i believe they got 1015, the long known front office, if you will, in late 1970, or 1971. This picture here is at the time of parkers resignation in 1938. And here you see him shaking hands with senator harrison, who was the chairman of the joint committee of the time. They are both wearing your spiffy white outfits for a june day in 1938. And here is a picture of parker standing up, that is stamm who is already been selected to succeed him. And though this is a picture which i mentioned in the paper, this, as i have been told, is something that somebody on the staff actually drew. I dont know how well you can see it. The person in the middle here is kind of running or fleeing the upper righthand corner is stamm, and hes holding a young child known as the code. This is, to me, a play on the orpheus story where orpheus is saving his wife from hades. And out of the nether world and bringing her back to the upper world. On the upper righthand corner, the person who is menacing is the bureau of Internal Revenue chief counsel. I dont know if you can see it, but on the far righthand corner, there appears to be a dog with three heads which would of course be cerberus, and it says the treasury hounds of ignorance, era, envy, and delay. The stones are named after people that were involved in the legislative process. The lower lefthand corner shows absolute law, and that was obviously, the big effort was to make this code absolute law. Thats all i got. Thank you. [applause] now we are going to skip a few years and Joe Thorndikes gonna talk to us a little bit about the joint Committee Involvement with the nixon tax return. Mr. Thorndike what i have to do to get my powerpoint screen back . Ill just start by saying george has better visuals that i have. I apologize for that, up front. I have found over the years that if you are talking about tax to a nontax audience or history to just about anybody, the visual aids are crucial to keep people focused. In this room, its probably a little bit easier. I can take a presumption of interest going in. I will say, as george said, that researching tax can be difficult. Any tax issue, it depends upon government documents. The national archives, quite understandably, is very skittish about releasing inadvertently taxpayer information. They have inadvertently released it to me in the past, and they get in trouble for that. It really does mean that theres kind of a curtain that comes in , drops down on a lot of tax issues and makes it very hard to research. Because it is actually just impossible for the archives to try to vet their files for text their information, so a lot of tax policy disappears. But, here we have a topic which is really all about taxpayer information. The difference being that it was made public, or at least a great deal of it. Still, you cant, george said, research the committees records for their investigation of the nixon tax returns, which means what i had to end up doing here, im still doing it, this is a work in progress, is sort of researching around the investigation. We have results, we have the committees report. But to know exactly what happened, and to answer all the questions, you have to look around that report. And come up with when you can. It is not a particularly reliable way of researching historical topic. For instance, it just point out to me this morning that one of the conclusions the point i make in the paper is that after all was said and done and the deficiencies had been identified, but he agreed to pay the figure that the irs had identified. And actually, that may or may not be true. And i cant give any way that i can verify whether or not he actually paid. But thats a typical example of the problem. In any case, what i tried to do is to look not so much of the investigation itself, which is to the extent that it is a published report is available, but also to look at the effect of this investigation on institutions around it. Particularly, on say, the irs, more broadly, on an institution like the tax system, the presidency, or even american politics. I think thats where we can see the importance. Alright, so, this is my title for this presentation is what nixon told an interviewer several years after he resigned the presidency. He reason to know, make sure you pay your taxes. Because you can get in trouble for. He did get them quite a bit of trouble for it. This began, the whole controversy over nixons tax returns began in the summer of 1973. It really didnt end until he resigned. It has been obscured in popular memory by the lurid allegations and deeds of the watergate breakin. But at the time, it was considered very serious and an existential threat to the presidency, even before watergate became a big deal. He was known for Walking Around an investigation saying, i think this is going to cost the president s job. He got some grief for saying it, but he believed it. The effect of this controversy was really that, its principal effect was that it eroded faith in government. Along with watergate, this is what did in the Nixon Administration. I do think theres a bright spot here, and it is the joint committees investigation. Its hard to find a bright spot in this story. But the joint Committee Gave us a sense of the value of disinterested expertise, of objective expertise. That is a muchcited virtue of the joint committee for virtually the entire history. George talks about in his paper. We speak of it now, its almost always the first thing somebody says in describing the committee. But its not a given. And its not really tested until extreme moments. And this was a Fairly Extreme moment. Alright, so, i think one thing that is kind of interesting here is that what strikes a lot of people as amazing, is that president s at the time of their official papers. As eisenhower says, from the time of george washington, it was the Standard Practice to treat president s papers like the ir personal property. Theres a great part of the joint committees report on the nixon returns that runs through what all the president s did with their papers. Its shocking that so many of them burned them or otherwise destroyed them or gave them to family members or whatever. They were free to do whatever they wanted. Congress more or less endorsed this idea which created the president ial library. It encourage president s to donate their papers to the federal government. But there were critics of this idea, who would say this is government property. To me, that seems obvious, but it was anything but obvious up until the time. I use the archaic abbreviation for the committee, the jci rt, george has wisely gone with the jct, but the name changed in 1976. They agreed this was Standard Practice. I like the conclusion of one legal scholar who said , ultimately, its a fight between those who wish to preserve the legacy and those who wish to preserve history. Thats exactly what it is. Alright, so, until 1959, donations were treated as deductible, charitable contributions when a president gave his papers to the archives, he could deduct it against any income on his taxes. Press reports suggested that eisenhower and nixon already taken advantage of this. Certainly johnson did as well. And johnson and nixon i have a couple of good pictures of them throughout this. They disgusted during this controversy. Congress decided to tighten the rules on this. That the deduction available to president s for this was too valuable. In 1969, they moved to scale it back. In the Tax Reform Act of 1969, did scale back. Up until that point, president could deduct the appreciated value of the papers against his income. He never had to pay any tax on that value, he never had to treat a value of those papers as income. And then there was a huge deduction available at the end. Congress scaled this back in 1969 to limit it to essentially the cost of the paper on which the materials were prepared. Johnson chose not, when the deadline of july 26 he chose not to rush another gifts through the archives, but nixon did. The summer of 1973, long after this point, comes out the nixon actually gave a substantial number of boxes of material to the national archives, it took a very substantial deduction on his 1969 tax return of 500,000, more than he could deduct in a single year. Initially only did acknowledge that that was the value of the papers he donated. The Washington Post was struck by the size of that donation. They did the math and they realized that would mean the president was paying no taxes at all, maybe a little bit and tax. They investigated it quite seriously. I worked for tax analysts. For all the years ive been there in the beginning, they always told me that tax analysts played a pivotal role in this whole thing. It turns out in my readings of history, they did play a pivotal role. It says something about the value of expertise, again. It was a very technical, dry article published about the president s donation that actually got the ball rolling. Which, basically, ira todd embalm said this is not a valid charitable gift, and he shouldnt be able to deduct the value from his tax return. What tax analysts did is wrote to the irs and said you need to appoint an outside investigator here. The irs is not capable of actually auditing the president s tax return seriously. Not the way they would with an ordinary taxpayer. And so, you need an outside investigator. You can deputize someone, we can get around restrictions on releasing taxpayer investigation, there is some way to do this. One thing they did say was, if the same facts were known in connection with an ordinary citizen, you wouldve already done this. You wouldve already taken a hard look at these returns. The irs very little the white house thought very little about that idea. And dismissed it in public comments. Eventually the irs said, no, we cant get around the restrictions on releasing taxpayer information, so no outside anybody to look at it. This bubbles on through the fall of 1973. Bulletin publishes a leak they received from the disgruntled irs employee in West Virginia who released data from the president s tax returns to the providence journal. And it turns out that the speculation was true, nixon had paid only 792 in federal income taxes in 1970 and 878 the next year. I mean, this was quite striking, and it got quite a bit of press. The white house responded by noting that the president had been audited by the irs in the past full field audit, or full field examination, with flying colors. Nixon even says this is good to know, you all should be happy that i have been audited and i did so well, because that tells you that president s are not exempt from what the irs does. But that didnt quiet the whole thing. Tax analysts, again, respond to all of us by saying you really need an outside auditor, here. And maybe you could ask the joint committee to do it, since they are actually already able to look at taxpayer information, but that didnt immediately go anywhere. Nixon gave a speech in november to the ap editors, where he gave the famous im not a crook comment. That actually came in reference to his personal finances, and not to more broadly, watergate. It was really about his finances. In any case, nixon accepted the inevitability of further disclosures on his personal finances. In the beginning of december, 1973, he makes a massive release of personal financial information, including his tax returns for 1969 through 1972. Thank you. The committee undertakes a comprehensive review. He specifically asked him to look at the sales of sacramento state. Wilbur mills saying, i would have advised the president not to do this. The request really was a gamble. Its possible that the committee was likely that the committee was going to make life rough for him. At the same time, the joint committee had a repetition for integrity and a political analysis that was appealing to the president in this moment of crisis. All the coverage, as i said before, the same way we talk about it now in the same breath as the committees name a singular reputation for expertise and integrity, and highly unusual deer in the congressional machinery. We would say that now, they were certainly saying it then. In any case, the committee, to cut to the chase, found that the president had not made a valid charitable gift. There was an issue of timing, a few documents have been backdated. There were also questions about the valuation of them. The deed of gift was problematic in certain ways, including the person who signed it, who appeared not to have the authority to sign on behalf of the president. They also found problems with the sale of the property and nixons estate, and with the sale of his coop apartment in new york city, neither of which he reported capital gain. There were other smaller issues as well. The deficiencies the Committee Identified were large. 444,000 in total deficiencies. In 1969, the deficiency, the statute of limitations had expired, they couldnt force the president to pay. But they did believe that the president owed really an extraordinary sum for the time. At the time estimated to be about half his net worth. This is the part that might be controversial. I would be interested if anyone has an idea of how to answer this. Nixon said he was going to pay the amount that the irs assessed him in a simultaneous reaudit. I dont know whether he actually did. Nobody, the irs or the joint committee raised in the issue of fraud or it the joint committee felt he didnt have the authority to do that. This is my last one. Damage to the irs. I think the long story here was that the irs was damaged by this episode. The suggestion that the agency couldnt adequately audit a prominent official, let alone the president , seemed to be borne out by this. Even Don Alexander was said to believe that the agency had goofed the first time around. And so, he commissioned a second one. When the agency did actually begin the second audit, it was seen as a johnnycomelately, the jcp is investigating, we had better do it too. I wish don was here to tell us how that happened. But i think i know what he would say. He would say the agency made a goodfaith effort to repair that mistake. But it was badly damaged, i think. It inaugurated a new tradition of financial openness by president s, and by extension now, as we see in the current debate, right now today, about candidates for the presidency. An expectation thanks to richard nixon, who showed us that shenanigans could be going on, there is now an expectation that president s will be extremely forthcoming with all of their financial data, including their tax returns. So, i think that is a significant thing, too. It contributed to the passage of the president or records act to try and deal with the fact that president s needed to ask return the records over to the government. I think most of all, and again, in the spirit of trying to look around the investigation, i think what we see here is that had their not been a body like the joint committee, they really would have been no obvious place to go for an outside assessments of the president s returns. This is a sort of really unusual moments. We dont have to many highprofile investigations of president s finances that go on. Its one of the key moments in a highly politicized environment where apolitical expertise is crucial. At the time, warmer kaplan was saying it was that for the committee, they have Better Things to do this and it puts them in an untenable position. But nonetheless, it showed the committee to be a resource for the nation in a way that other agencies could not be trusted as much. Thats it. Thank you, joe. [applause] ok, thank you both, george and joe. We have a few minutes, if anyone has any questions or comments, feel free. Again, i would just ask that you keep them brief. [inaudible] i am pete davis, i was hired as an economist on the joint committee in 1974. My recollection is that mr. Nixon scraped up some free cash, and the pardon the mr. Ford wrote for him was written for all crimes and misdemeanors, not for watergate crimes and misdemeanors specifically. To allow him to evade paying the bulk of that tax that he owed. And president fords press secretary resigned over that issue. Isnt that correct . Mr. Thorndike it is my understanding that the pardon was written with tax issues in mind. I dont know if that, in fact, led to him not paying. I just dont know. Is that Common Knowledge at the time . I dont know. I recall press reports. Mr. Thorndike its hard to tell. Thank you, i dont know. To me, my bigger question at this point. Mr. Yin i think the more interesting issue in a way, is the second count of the impeachment, which involved not nixons personal filings and compliance with the law, but his abuse of the agency and going after political enemies and so forth. That was the second count of the impeachment items. Both of which failed, though, right . I think congress felt they had other issues to pursue. Other questions . George, let me ask you one. Can you talk at all about the composition, the size and the composition of the staff, other than the chiefs that your paper mentions, during the time you were looking at . Mr. Yin sure. Its a very small staff. They started out in divided up the staff into an Investigations Division and a implication division to reflect this dual congressional purpose for the committee. The Investigations Committee had parker on it, i think there was one additional person under him, it isnt clear to me what that persons background was, as such. On simplification, they ended up with three people, charles hamill, who had been the chair of the board of tax appeals, which was created in 1924, before joining the joint Committee Staff in 1927. Edward mcdermott, who went on later on to found the mcdermott will firm, an emery firm the we now know today. And then colin stamm in august 1927 came on board. So the three of them were basically the simplification division for some period of time. There was one other professional hire than i did pick up, a fellow named gaston chastain. He was fairly quickly delegated to be responsible for the refund work, because the refund work came to the Committee Beginning in 1927, and then it was included in the revenue act of 1928. Once that work got going, they obviously had to make a hire to start working on that material. Part of this is of ignorance, but for me, the nixon investigation was the particularly notable investigation that had been undertaken by joint committee. And then subsequently, the work on enron, was obviously a major undertaking. Are there others . Mr. Thorndike george wrote about in the 1920s, about what the committee undertook. The early ones. Mr. Thorndike george would know more about this, but my sense is this republic investigation thing was never the main point. And the committee to develop as the sort of expertise source for lawmakers. But certainly, its creation of a lot to do with the idea that it would be an investigating body. George is the master here. Mr. Yin the background of the refund work is really quite fascinating. The refund work, really was an important part of congresss mission for the jct in the earlier years. Although theres kind of a papering over of what the refund staff was doing and whether they agreed or disagreed with it, the treasury, my reading is that there were actually some important disagreements that would rise the level of the joint committee itself, meeting to discuss substantively and debate substantively the proper treatment of some of the big refund cases that had come up. They would have a representative of the bir there. The joint Committee Staffers that will be presented both sides of the issue, and the committee would ultimately resolve those. It was interesting, i was thinking of the refund jurisdiction which we all tend to sort of slough off. I was involved in a matter of earlier late last year, which was joint committee case. A refund that went to the joint committee. The increased attention by both the Practitioners Council and by the irs, in appropriately, properly, and completely documenting the resolution of the case, simply because there was this knowledge that the joint committee was going to take a look at it, was quite impressive, i thought. I say, we dont spend much time talking about joint Committee Refund jurisdiction. Mr. Thorndike that was the goal. There may be a benefit from the jurisdiction even if the joint committee doesnt recognize it that often. My question is about section 168 in the expansion, could you repeat your comments on section 168 . Mr. Yin i just picked that one out. You could pick any one out. If you turned 168, you will see pages and pages of footnotes and materials reflecting and this year, this was the rule. Thats the rule for depreciation and so forth. Over the years, it has changed a lot. So all of that is tracked. The point is, if you didnt have a code today, that still is the law. And so you would have to kind of preserve it in some way. The question is how do you preserve it without a code . The answer is you could put all of it into the text of the actual rule, which is mindboggling to me, or you could do what they began doing in 1928, which is the keep the current law rule in the text of the statute. And then they just let the other rules remain in the statutes that were previously enacted that are not repealed. The problem with that is if you are researching and trying to figure out what was the law 10 years ago, you actually have to find that statute and then you have to trace every subsequent statute to make sure there was no amendment or repeal to that original statute. So you can imagine, the task becomes tremendously challenging. Bear in mind also, that during the 1930s and 1940s, and joe knows this much better than i do, there was a tremendous amount of tax legislation coming out, virtually a bill, a major bill every single year coming out. At some point, the people who were working in this area are just getting overloaded with this deluge of information, which is all in separate little pieces. George, you mentioned the first professional was an engineer at the joint tax. I was wondering if you could talk briefly about the rise of the concept of the tax professional, whether it was started with the government as a streamlined professional concept, or whether was a privatesector concept that had the role of both treasury and joint tax for congress and administration in to vault in the specialized professional role . Yin thats a good question. At some point, the wrecking mission and congress was that it was lawyers and economists were the two main professional, counsel also. The main professionals that need to be on the staff. They have the kind of expertise that the staff that Congress Really relies on. Parker was unusual because he did start out with a law degree and without an economics degree. He was an engineer, a very well trained engineer, but an engineer. The reason that he came about was he had been the chief investigator of the cousins Investigation Committee that had been investigating all of the problems that the bureau of Internal Revenue had with, among other things, the depletion allowance. Which, the rule of the time required you to value the Natural Resource discovery. But that now required a valuation engineer, that was parker. He had done that. Then in 1926, that investigation ends, the joint committee is created, parker sends note to somebody he knows in congress and says would you consider me to be on the staff . That funnels over to green, green then hires them, even though in 1926, they essentially change the rules so that for oil and gas property, it wasnt necessary to know what the value of the property was anymore, because they did percentage depletion. So, thats just kind of one of the ironies that i picked up. Eventually, parker does complete a law degree. He mustve gone at night while he was working at the joint committee. He does get a law degree at 31. I mentioned he did work with mcgill on the british tax system, obviously that he became pretty familiar with the tax law at some point in time. Mr. Thorndike there is a privatesector story to be told there. In the early 30s of late 20s, theres a rise of an identifiable tax court. There is a Meaningful Community of tax lawyers that starts developing in the 20s and 30s. Mcgill is a leader in that. And theres also a recognition that lawyers and economists need to find a way to Work Together efficiently. And so, one of the more illuminating comments ive ever heard on this topic came from an economist who worked in the Treasury Department in the same years. He told me that the greatest regret he ever had was not going to law school. And he seriously considered it, even while serving in the because they could see even then that the crucial decisions were going to be made by the lawyers and accountants together. Literature out there on professional expertise. And this community of experts that grows up and really takes off in the 40s and 50s they are an unusual blend of economists, lawyers, and what i would call economically minded lawyers who dominate the process. Ok, will thank you very much. I thought they were both interesting papers. [applause] announcer you are watching American History tv, all weekend and every weekend on cspan3. The join the conversation like us on facebook. On april 12,go 1981. Kennedy space center, florida space. D a new era of a documentary and the story of the inaugural mission. 22 years later after 20 the crew, columbia and were lost on february 21. The Shell Program was retired in 2011. Narrator sunday, april 12, 1981. Kennedy space center, florida. 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