Political Quotes

“There is no doubt about it. As the gentleman well knows, whenever you come to the floor and propose a constitutional amendment, one of the reticences, one of the resistance factors you face, is that people say we should not tamper with the Constitution lightly. We really ought to think about these issues gravely and seriously, about whether it is appropriate to amend the Constitution. We ought to consider the consequences of our conduct. Is a constitutional amendment really necessary? If this was such a great idea, how come the Founding Fathers did not do it? I know, because you have carried this amendment on this floor many times in the past, you face that argument where people say, no, if it was necessary the Founding Fathers would have put a tax limitation amendment in the original Constitution. They would not have said you could raise taxes with a simple majority. They would have said you could raise them only with a supermajority, so you must be wrong. We do not need this. This is a radical idea and bad idea. When I tell the story, if I could just make this point, about that empty chair of the taxpayer who is not there in the conversation, I want to make the point that when we enact new programs, we never talk to the taxpayer, and the role of government is so dramatically different than it was at the founding of this country. The first and most important difference is that we did not have an income tax.”