In six days of open hearings, the House Ways & Means Committee had heard 100 witnesses denounce the Administration's proposed excess-profits tax as unworkable. But for all the impression they made on the committee's Democratic majority, they might just as well have been hollering down a well.
Last week, committee members heard a witness who made them sit up and take notice. He was Congress' own tax expert, Colin Stam, a career man respected alike by Democrats and Republicans. Since Stam testified at a closed session—and kept his mouth shut afterward—there was no detailed report on what he had said....