JOHN LINDER: “we precisely made the decision in the drafting of this bill not to fight the battle over increasing or decreasing…”

“we precisely made the decision in the drafting of this bill not to fight the battle over increasing or decreasing revenues; we would lose votes on that issue alone, not to eliminate all the excise taxes, we would lose 150 votes in this House just on tobacco; not to reform any programs; we wanted to just change one paradigm, collecting revenues on income, to another, collecting revenues on consumption, so that it would be neutral. Let us just admit that the United States consumers would save tons of money if they just were voluntary taxpayers and paid taxes when they chose to pay taxes, and then, later, we will worry about the size of the government. But I want to tell my colleague one thing about the size of government if we pass this. Nobody knows how much we spend here. But if my mother saw every time she bought a loaf of bread how much went to Federal taxes, she would start showing the interest. We right now have a huge bias in favor of more government and more taxes because most of us do not pay the income taxes, but we pay the consumption tax currently embedded in the goods and services that we buy, and that is what we have to convince America of. You are already paying this tax. It is the same tax. {time} 2200 But how would you like to pay the same taxes and have the same standard of living, but if you are making $60,000 a year, instead of taking home $3,800 for your house payment and your groceries, you are taking home $5,000?”