James A. Leach: “Tax cut initiatives must meet two tests: appropriateness and fairness. On appropriateness grounds, the question is…”

“Tax cut initiatives must meet two tests: appropriateness and fairness. On appropriateness grounds, the question is whether the country can afford $400 billion a year deficits over the next decade, $600 billion a year if Social Security is removed from the equation. On fairness grounds, the question is whether the $93,000, which will be saved by an individual with a million dollars of income, is credible when the savings for a middle income carpenter is likely to be substantially less than 1 percent of this amount. While tax cuts, of course, benefit those who pay taxes, higher income individuals particularly, the approach the House is advancing today may be the most regressive in American history. For the past century the American consensus has been that our tax system should have graduation. The well-to-do should pay a somewhat higher rate than the less well-to-do. This tax cut reverses this consensus. The middle class will pay more than the poor, but the rich will pay at a lower rate than the middle class and in some cases the working poor. This is not fair. Indeed, it is unconscionable. Wealth divisions in America will be accentuated by this tax approach and the burden of supporting government will be so shifted that according to Warren Buffet, it will amount to class welfare for high income Americans. There are in this bill certain attractive features. But on balance and on the whole, the case for it is thoroughly uncompelling.”