Lee Metcalf: “we are all very much aware that today is April 15: Tax day. Millions of Americans are feverishly working to complete and…”

“we are all very much aware that today is April 15: Tax day. Millions of Americans are feverishly working to complete and mail their tax returns by midnight tonight. With that in mind, it is very appropriate that today we will vote on the tax limitation amendment. I have joined with 118 colleagues from both parties to sponsor this amendment to the Constitution. It would require a two-thirds congressional appropriation for any new or higher taxes. Mr. Speaker, in 1950 about 3 percent of the average American family's income went to taxes. Three percent in 1950. Now, over 40 percent of the family's income goes for local, State, and Federal taxes. And, for what? Intrusive regulation on small business, tobacco subsidies, snooping into tax records by Internal Revenue Service agents, duplication in the Federal bureaucracy, and an ever increasing agency bureaucracy that hinders rather than helps our local schools teach our kids. According to a 1994 study by the National Taxpayer Union Foundation, the coming explosion in Federal entitlement spending could cause after-tax incomes to fall by as much as 59 percent over the next 45 years. We cannot stand a 59-percent increase. The study shows that funding benefits and other Government services will require taxes of between 57 to 69 percent of our income. Mr. Speaker, the American family simply cannot survive and pay those kinds of taxes. At 40 percent we are close to the breaking point.”