Jim Saxton: “I thank the gentleman for emphasizing the importance of tax policy relative to economic growth. One of the things that I…”

“I thank the gentleman for emphasizing the importance of tax policy relative to economic growth. One of the things that I would like to point out, and I know the gentleman knows this as well, the President today has been criticized by some for his tax policy, I think, unfairly. One of the charges that is often made is that these are, quote, tax cuts for the rich. I have some other statistics here that I would just like to share with my colleagues and that is simply this: if you believe that tax policy can be used to promote economic growth, as the gentleman and I do and as many others in this House do, then we are going to have to cut taxes relative to the people who pay taxes, because people who don't pay taxes can't get a tax cut because they don't pay taxes, unless we give them money back. And so the facts are that the top 1 percent of the wage earners in this country pay 34 percent of the taxes. That is the individual income taxes. The top 5 percent of the people, wage earners, pay 54 percent of the taxes to the Federal Government. The top 10 percent pay 65 percent of the taxes. The top 25 percent pay 84 percent of the taxes. And the top 50 percent of the wage earners in this country pay 96.5 percent. So the bottom 50 percent of the wage earners in America, in the United States, pay about 3.5 percent of the taxes.…”