Political Quotes

“Mr. Speaker, in the 35 counties in east Tennessee, 200,000 people are adversely affected by the marriage tax penalty. More than 110,000 couples pay approximately $1,400 per year more in taxes simply because they are married. That is not right, and the fundamental issue here is whether or not we are going to reduce the tax burden on the middle-class folks in this country. When I was born in 1957, if you add up the Federal, State, and local tax burden on my parents when I was born, it was not collectively, combined, more than 10 percent of every dollar that they made. Today, it is almost 50 percent. In my lifetime the level of taxation in this country has gone from less than a dime of a dollar to almost half of every dollar you make. At what point are we going to roll this back? The fundamental issue is, it is time in a budget surplus to roll some of the taxes back from the middle-class taxpayers in this country. If we do not do it now, with these record surpluses, my question is, when are we going to? If we do not sign the bill into law now, when will it happen? Because I would suggest if we do not do it now, it is not going to happen, and it is important that we continue to persist.”