Political Quotes

“when I am back in Michigan in our 7th Congressional District, around Battle Creek and Jackson and Hillsdale and Adrian, not a day goes by but a young mother or a young father comes up to me and says, you know, we are working very hard and we can hardly get by. We are both working now. Or sometimes it is a young mother, all by herself trying to support her kids, and they say why is it so difficult now when my mom and dad, when I was growing up, only one of them worked and we still ended up with enough money to go on vacations, to have good food, and to have good housing? You know what I have concluded, Mr. Speaker, a large part of today's problem is? The tax trap. Back in the 1950's and the 1960's the taxes only took a small part of our earnings, but today taxes take almost 50 percent of what we earn. Taxes at the local, State and national level take 41 percent of what we earn. And then, if we earn more money and work harder, and we get into those higher tax brackets, in addition to the 15 percent that goes into FICA, we can go as high as 39 percent on our income tax. I call it the tax trap because people may remember that old song that says the more you study, the more you learn; the more you learn, the more you forget; the more you forget, the less you know; so why study? It is sort of true on taxes.”