Rod Grams: “When my good friends, Senator Hutchinson of Arkansas and Senator Dan Coats of Indiana, and I first proposed the…”

“When my good friends, Senator Hutchinson of Arkansas and Senator Dan Coats of Indiana, and I first proposed the $500-per-child tax credit back in 1993, we were not doing it to grab headlines and it was not a piece of cheap political theater. We pursued the $500-per-child tax credit because we believed that working families are horribly overtaxed. And how did we know that? Because the American people told us so. Americans are by nature a very giving and generous people. For a long time, they did not complain--at least too loudly--that their tax burden seemed to be rising every year even though they were not seeing any improvements in Government services. If anything, their tax dollars seemed to be buying less and less. But when taxes reached the point where working Americans were spending more of their hard-earned money feeding the Government than they were spending to feed, clothe, and shelter their families, well then, the taxpayers started feeling as though their generosity was being taken advantage of. They began demanding that the Government stop spending their dollars so recklessly.”