Political Quotes

“I would just certainly agree with the gentleman that clearly the task of Congress is to represent the vast majority of the people and not just the very few who are wealthy and powerful. But I think that that is very often not the case. Let me just point out one example of that in terms of tax policy. In fact, we are debating that right now in terms of the budget that was recently proposed by the gentleman from Texas, which would give huge tax breaks to the wealthy while at the same time we would cut back on Medicare, certain Medicaid programs and very significantly, by the way, on veterans' programs. In terms of tax policy what has gone on in this country people should know that from 1977 to 1990, the Social Security tax was raised nine times, and today, people are paying, if one is self-employed, one is paying 15 percent before one pays any income tax and a FICA tax. And yet during that same period, while taxes on working people through the FICA tax went way up, taxes for the wealthy and the large corporations went way down, and the Federal Government ended up collecting significantly less money, which helped cause us the deficit problem that we are trying to address right now.”