Political Quotes

“Mr. President, it is another day and another really bad idea that is coming from the Democrats to fund their reckless tax-and- spending spree. It seems like, to fund this massive amount of spending, they are trying desperately to come up with new revenue sources, so much so that, as of yesterday, still under consideration was a tax on unrealized gains--in other words, on income that people haven't received yet. Let's just put that into perspective. If carried to its full conclusion and it became a precedent as part of the tax policy in this country--and it never has been before--to put it in terms for people to understand, a lot of people participate in the 401(k) or they have some sort of retirement plan from their employers. If there were a gain in a particular year--say that the total value of the portfolios of assets in their retirement plans, those 401(k)s, went up by 20 percent--they could be taxed on that 20 percent even though they haven't received the income yet. That is what is being talked about here in terms of precedent. Never before has that been attempted or tried or implemented in American history, where you would actually have a tax on income before people actually ever received the income. Of course, if you carry that to its natural conclusion, as we all know, markets go up and markets go down. If you had a year wherein your total value went down by 20 percent, then what? Do you get a refund from the Federal Government?…”