Political Quotes

“Mr. President, the reason I wish to speak is because there is a lot of confusion around something called the payroll tax holiday. It is legislation that is likely to be acted upon by the Congress and perhaps a bill will be sent to the President before the end of this year. It is something the President is pushing very strongly to try to achieve. There are a lot of different versions of it and a lot of confusing ideas about what people support and what they do not. I wish to talk a little bit about that. First of all, what is it? The payroll tax is the tax that funds Social Security. It is a tax that is paid on the employee's wages. Half of that is paid by the employee, half of it is paid by the employer. From the employee's standpoint, the more they pay in, the more they get out when they retire; the less they pay in, the less they get out. That is what funds Social Security. There is a question: Why would someone not support a reduction in the payroll tax--or as it is called right now a temporary payroll tax holiday because what is being proposed is that a portion of that tax would not be paid. It represents one-third the amount of the tax an employee would ordinarily be paying that is not being paid today. The President would actually like to cut that to the point that an employee would only pay half the payroll tax liability. I understand he is going to revise his proposal and not ask there be any relief on the employer's side.…”