Political Quotes

“I give notice to the House today that I have offered a piece of legislation that would have the Department of the Treasury analyze a proposal to transform our system of taxation and to move us away from this very complicated, burdensome form of taxation that now raises the revenues necessary for governmental purposes, to a transaction fee in which we would utilize the great power of our economy to tap into economic resources in a way in which we could transform our country, respond to the needs of all of our people in a responsible way, but to do it without the necessity to pry into the private lives of our citizens or to audit their financial behavior. This proposal as we present it would have the Treasury prepare a study of this idea. It is offered after a great deal of research and effort. We hope that it will find in the workings of the House the kind of urgency that should be there, given our failure to respond to this problem in any real way for a very, very long time. It is the 90th birthday of the income tax in our country. It started at 2 pages, it is now tens of thousands of pages. Today we can begin not just to curse the darkness but, as has been said, light a candle.”