Political Quotes

“I was sitting up in my office listening, reading letters from constituents, letters that wanted more money for the AIDS program, letters that wanted more money over the approximately $29 billion that is going to our foreign support programs. They wanted more money for food stamps, letters coming in wanting more money for health care, wanting more money for NIH. I think it should be obvious, certainly it is with most of our Members, that there are many, many problems out there; and the question is how many of those problems should it be the responsibility of government to solve. We are now faced with a situation in the United States where approximately 50 percent of the adult population only pay about 1 percent of the income tax. So as we have moved in the last 30 to 40 years from an environment that our forefathers set up in the Constitution that encouraged effort, it encouraged savings, it encouraged individuals that saved and worked hard and invested, because they would be better off than those that did not; then, over the last 35 to 40 years, we have been sort of dividing the wealth up by increasing the taxes on those that might make it or those that work harder, or those that save and invest, and distributing some of their tax money to the individuals that made less effort or were, in other words, sometimes unlucky. I think that is a danger for our future.”