Christopher Shays: “And if we are talking about the concept of fairness, why should a married couple pay more than a couple that is not…”

“And if we are talking about the concept of fairness, why should a married couple pay more than a couple that is not married in taxes? Why should someone who has earned Social Security and if they go back to working and paying taxes pay an additional penalty due to the Social Security earnings limitation? For every $3 above that $17,000, $1 is taken out of Social Security. That was a matter of fairness. And the third tax cut that we move forward with, why should a corporation be able to deduct health care and a private individual working, self-employed individual, not have that same deduction? In fact, the tax cut that the President vetoed just 2 years ago allowed all Americans to deduct for health care. So I am just struck by the fact that we have made tremendous progress, we are talking about fairness in taxes, but we are also talking about something else. We are talking about what taxes will help the economy grow. In 1990, I voted for a tax increase. The one tax increase I voted for, and I learned a big lesson. I voted to increase the luxury tax. And it was interesting, I voted to increase the luxury tax and the government got less money. They got less money because people, who can all make rational decisions, they decided that if the tax was higher, they would buy less, and we got less revenue. Conversely, when we dealt with capital gains, we cut taxes and we got so much more revenue. So what two better examples.…”