Todd Rokita: “Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The first false solution: We need more tax revenue; we're not taxing ourselves enough, and only…”

“Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The first false solution: We need more tax revenue; we're not taxing ourselves enough, and only if we tax more, especially from the, quote- unquote, rich--those who haven't paid their fair share, quote-unquote-- we'd solve this debt problem. Let me address that for a minute. This is one of the slides that doesn't come from the Budget Committee; it comes from the IRS. I have no reason to dispute it. I saw it in The Wall Street Journal a couple of years ago. The bars represent where the money in this country is, the taxable revenue, where people's property is, and it's divided along income groups. If you look at the far right of this chart, you'll see that the furthest right bars represent Americans who have taxable revenue of anywhere from $1 million to $10 million. And the largest, the highest bars, where the middle is, represent Americans who have taxable revenue of anywhere from $75,000 to $500,000 a year. The point of this slide is, you can take all the millionaires' money if you wanted, really make them pay their fair share, take a hundred percent of what they earn, and you'll have to assume two things: that they would continue producing, which of course they wouldn't, and you'd have to assume that they would continue living in the country, which I assume they wouldn't. Look at the mass exodus going on in France now with a 75 percent marginal tax rate. But let's assume for the sake of discussion that you take a hundred percent of what they earn.…”