Former Senator Alan Simpson (below) was an original author of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA), also known as the "Simpson-Mazzoli Act".


Obama’s Debt Commission Will Consider a Value-Added Tax
Monday, April 26, 2010
By Susan Jones, Senior Editor

(CNSNews.com) – When President Obama asked former Sen. Alan Simpson (R-Wyo.) and Democrat Erskine Bowles to chair his debt commission in February, he told them to consider any and all ways to reduce the federal deficit – including new taxes, apparently.

Bowles, a former chief of staff in the Clinton White House, told Fox News Sunday that “the president looked Senator Simpson and me in the eye and he said, ‘Everything is on the table.’ So we are going to look at every single way to right this fiscal ship,â€