Martin Hoke: “The question that I wanted to ask the gentleman was if he was aware that 39.2 percent of all Federal income tax paid is…”

“The question that I wanted to ask the gentleman was if he was aware that 39.2 percent of all Federal income tax paid is paid for by only 3.3 percent of the taxpayers, the top 3.3 percent of taxpayers pay 40 percent of the taxes? That being the case, the numbers that you quote there, they are, you know, made to appear, and I do not know if the numbers are right on the floor. You know on the floor we see all kinds of stuff and people make averments that God only knows if they are true or not, but I will assume your chart is correct. It only stands to reason that the people making more money are going to get more dollars back when you consider the fact that you have got 3.3 percent of all returns, all individuals paying income tax paying 40 percent of the taxes. This is the way, this is the way our system works. The problem is that we do not have enough people at the top, if you tax them completely, if you leave them with just a, you know, a minimum wage, it still does not solve our deficit problem. What has happened is that we have year after year after year continually eroded to a greater extent the amount of money that is being paid by middle-class working American men and women. That is the problem we have in our tax system.”