Political Quotes

“reclaiming my time to answer the gentleman's question, I would answer the question with a question, which is how does the gentleman feel about the fact that 40 percent of American taxpayers end up with no tax liability, and the fact that the top half of all taxpayers in this country contribute almost 97 percent of all income tax revenues to the government? So you have to have a situation where the people who pay taxes are getting tax relief, because we have created such an upside down system where 40 percent of Americans have no tax liability. How is that sharing in the burdens of democracy? How is that contributing to the needs of the Federal Government? Let me go into this a bit. Up to 40 percent of Federal tax filers cannot receive further tax relief because they have no tax liability. Millions of families in the bottom 20 percent have either zero tax liability or get money back from the government after April 15 through the Earned Income Tax Credit or the child tax credit. In 2003, as I said, the top half of taxpayers, the top 50 percent of taxpayers, contributed 96.5 percent of all Federal individual income taxes, while the bottom 50 percent, the bottom half, contributed less than 3.5 percent. This reflects the early effects of the Republican tax reforms under the Economic Growth and Tax Reconciliation Act and the Jobs and Growth Tax Reconciliation Act.…”