Political Quotes

“I would just say, Jim, it is true that American workers are currently the most productive in the world, but we cannot continue that kind of efficiency and productivity because the other countries are increasing their rate of productivity faster than the United States. Part of these reasons is because we make it so expensive under our Tax Code for people to save and invest. We penalize. I am just reading some of the statistics here, where the average tax in the United States is 28 percent, compared to France at 18 percent, and this is for savings and investment; 28 percent in the United States, 18 percent in France. Canada has 23 percent, and Japan has 20 percent. So here the United States is making it more difficult to save and invest, and like we mentioned before, the capital gains tax relief means if the American family buys a home, for example, and it goes up with inflation but does not go up any faster than inflation, when they sell that house we penalize that family for the increased value of their house because of inflation. So if we have some capital gains tax relief, then we say, look, if that house would only buy the equivalent of, say, five cars when you bought it, it doubles in price over 15 years, but it still only buys five cars, if we are going to tax on increased wealth, then we should not be taxing that inflation. That is what we are trying to do when we talk about capital gains tax relief.”