Roy Blunt: “Mr. Speaker, with the train metaphor that we are having here, it does seem to me that this bill and what is contained in…”

“Mr. Speaker, with the train metaphor that we are having here, it does seem to me that this bill and what is contained in it will be the engine that moves the train. We do need to respond to what needs to happen to get our economy headed back in the right direction. This bill helps do that. This discussion of rates, Mr. Speaker, is very important. It is very important to talk about this whole rate issue. I mean, no American, as our bill proposes, would establish this principle. No American taxpayers should pay more than a third of their income in Federal income tax. That is what this bill says. That does not say they would not pay more than a third of their income in taxes. That says the Federal income tax. You could argue this in a much more fine way than we are here today by saying that even that rate is too high because that does not consider the Social Security tax. It does not consider the Medicare tax. It does not consider State income tax. It does not consider sales tax. It does not consider gasoline tax. It does not consider tax on utility bills. It does not consider the 103-year-old Spanish-American War tax on your local telephone bill. This just says that on your income, with your Federal income tax there should be a limit. And it also says at the bottom levels that we are better off with a 10 percent bottom line bracket than a 15 percent bottom bracket.”