[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 32 (Friday, March 20, 1998)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2354-S2356]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         THE CASE FOR TAX CUTS

  Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, America always rises to a challenge. We 
meet challenges readily and directly and would never ignore one 
knowingly as a country.
  Therefore, it is not surprising that the greatest threat facing our 
Nation today would be the least visible. It is invisible because it 
originates behind our defenses. It does not come from a foreign 
country; it comes from our own. While it directly threatens our well-
being, it dares not confront us directly. It uses Americans' good will 
and generosity against them. All of this serves to make the threat more 
insidious and more dangerous.
  Mr. President, the greatest threat facing America today is excessive 
taxation and with it a Washington culture that has transformed 
excessive into acceptable.
  By any estimation, America's tax burden is excessive. Washington is 
projected to take $1.68 trillion in taxes this year. No government in 
history has ever collected that much from its citizens. As an overall 
burden, that $1.7 trillion amounts to 20.1 percent of the Nation's 
gross domestic product. One-fifth of everything produced in this 
country is consumed by this city, this Government, Washington, DC. That 
one-fifth is the highest overall tax burden since World War II, when 
America had committed itself to a total effort to win the greatest war 
in mankind's history.
  Even then, under those most serious of circumstances, the tax burden 
placed on the Nation was only slightly larger than it is today. That 
burden lasted for just 2 years, 1944 and 1945. When the war was done, 
then the taxes returned to normal because this Congress made that 
happen because at that time we had not slipped into the culture of 
excessive taxation.
  In contrast, today's tax burden shows no signs of ever ending, to the 
point that excessive taxation has come to be accepted as normal. Even 
after the tax cuts of last year have been fully implemented by the year 
2003, the overall Federal tax burden will still amount to 19.5 percent, 
still one-fifth of everything produced in this country. The burden will 
still be higher than all but 2 years following World War II: 1969, when 
America was involved in war, and in 1981, when America was being 
wracked by runaway inflation.
  Today we no longer see the specter of Hitler stalking across Europe; 
today we no longer are fighting in the jungles of Southeast Asia; today 
there is no runaway inflation; but today, and even more sadly, 
tomorrow, America is saddled with the same tax burden that used to be 
reserved only for calamities of the magnitude I have just spoken of.
  Today's calamity is the tax burden itself. What once was effect is 
now cause. Let me repeat that: What once was effect is now cause. Last 
year Federal, State and local taxes took 38.2 percent of the income of 
the median two-earner family. It is bad enough that Washington, DC, 
takes one-fifth of what America produces. But it is intolerable that we 
are party to, and the principal cause of, taking two-fifths from 
America's families.
  These are not just abstract numbers, folks. Meaningless? Not at all. 
They are not just something that someone with a green eyeshade or a 
calculator came up with. These are real dollars taken from real 
families who could spend them, save them, invest them in real things. 
The median dual-earning American family pays $22,521--that is $15,400 
to Washington alone. That is more than they pay in food costs, for 
housing, for clothing, or for medical care--combined. That is more than 
they have ever paid, and they must now work longer and harder than ever 
to pay it. It is no wonder that two must work when it takes two-fifths 
of a couple's earnings just to pay their taxes. In fact, one of those 
two working parents virtually is working entirely for Washington, DC, 
every day and every hour that spouse spends working, so that Washington 
politicians can simply spend and spend and spend.

  Americans do not think it is fair, only Washington does. In a recent 
poll, 89 percent of Americans thought that the total tax burden for a 
family of four should not be any higher than 25 percent. That would 
mean Washington would still get a bigger portion of the family's 
earnings than each member of the family. Again, that's a statement 
worth repeating. Even with that figure, Washington still gets more of 
the money earned from the family than each member of the family gets.
  Americans are a generous people and they thought it was fair that 
Washington get only 25 percent. Sadly, Washington, DC, does not. 
Without any war, any disaster, and with times good, Washington demands 
more than it ever has. Where will the money come from in the time of 
disaster then? Washington cannot afford a disaster, because America can 
now no longer afford Washington.
  Somewhere along the way, the Federal Government lost its way. 
Washington has quietly and insidiously subverted the normal 
relationship that should exist between a state and a free people. Where 
excessive tax burdens were once relegated to abnormal circumstances, 
Washington now sees excessive as normal. Where wealth was once 
considered the property of those who created it, Washington now sees it 
as the property of those who tax it. Tax dollars have become 
Washington's dollars--not the rightful property of those from whom they 
are excessively taken, but the inalienable property of those to whom 
they are delivered. Only in Washington, DC, can a tax cut cause 
indignation, moral outrage that there exist people so selfish that they 
would dare to think their claim on their own earnings is more just than 
the claims of the bureaucrats and the politicians who wish to spend it.
  It is not Washington's money. It is not Washington's money. Not one 
cent of it. It belongs to those who make it. We are not entitled to it. 
We are merely its stewards. Our claim to it does not outweigh that of 
those who earn it, their spouses, their children, their families.
  Nor is it just money. To those who did not work for it, it is not 
real. They see it as a child might, understanding neither its origin 
nor its limits. What we diminish by calling it ``taxes'' is the work, 
the time, the property, the sacrifice and the very dreams of those who

[[Page S2355]]

earn it for themselves and their families. It is what is taken when 
Washington taxes excessively.
  That people have a fundamental right to their time, their work and 
their property--none of us would deny this, and none of us would 
support a system whereby these things were taken. If the Nation 
commandeered an individual's time, it would rightfully be called a 
police state. In fact, when an individual's time is taken by 
imprisonment, it is in fact a police action that takes it. We ended the 
draft because we thought it was unfair to lay claim to a young man's 
life when there was no emergency of war facing this Nation. Yet, when 
the subject is money, Washington demands its portion even in the 
absence of an emergency.
  Excessive taxation is no less than confiscation. When the Federal 
Government takes more than its share, it forces others to pay more than 
their share. What crime have those committed who are able to pay, that 
they can be taxed and taxed and taxed? They are guilty of nothing but 
success, of supporting themselves, of having created jobs for others, 
of having saved so that others might borrow and open businesses and 
create yet more jobs. In 1995 the top one-half of earners paid 95.4 
percent of the total income tax of this country.
  Is it any wonder, then, when we have so subverted the system that 
excess is normal and that the product of a person's labor is rightfully 
Washington's, that we have heinous abuses by the IRS? They cannot be 
excused, but perhaps partially explained, by the development of a 
culture that has come to see success as an indictment.
  Excessive taxation is immoral. The power to tax is the power to 
destroy. Yet, when Daniel Webster and Chief Justice John Marshall said 
it, they could not have known how right they really were. The power to 
tax not only has the potential to destroy those who are taxed but also, 
in a much more subtle way, the recipient as well.
  The American people demanded welfare reform not because they are 
mean-spirited, but because they recognize that no system can succeed 
that separates money from work. Nor should it. To an American, it is no 
less than immoral to get something for nothing. Washington finally 
recognized this in the case of welfare, but Washington has yet to apply 
that same principle to itself and to its taxes.
  By separating revenue from the work and the success that created it, 
Washington comes to take money for granted. It begins to be more 
concerned with those who receive Government programs than with those 
who are actually paying for them. And in the ultimate travesty, it 
comes to stigmatize those who, by their hard work and success, can 
afford to pay.
  In short, Washington becomes morally weakened by indolence, as does 
someone who lives perpetually on someone else's work. It begins to take 
both the tax and the taxpayer for granted and, ultimately, it has come 
to resent the taxpayer as well.
  Just as the power to tax is the power to destroy, so the reverse is 
true as well. The power to cut taxes is the power to create, to create 
higher wages, more and better jobs, homes, businesses, savings and 
investments.
  In a free society and a free market, people decide where they want 
their money to go, and it will go where it will be most efficiently 
used. Raising taxes circumvents this process. Cutting taxes 
reinvigorates it.
  Cutting taxes is not simply about leaving money with the individuals 
who created it, it is about leaving opportunities in communities. 
Washington spent more than $5 trillion in constant 1993 dollars on 
welfare in the 30 years between 1965 and 1994. That figure is roughly 
the size of the entire national debt today. Yet, there was never a 
Federal program that could give an individual what Main Street America 
does day after day after day, and that is a meaningful job, a job that 
exists strictly because someone, under no compulsion, thought it was 
worthwhile to hire that person. No Government program can replace by 
giving what an employee earns by working.
  Cutting taxes will put money not only where it belongs morally--with 
those who earned it--but where it belongs economically--into the 
Nation's economy. With this spur, the growth we need to meet our future 
commitments would be at hand. Money going to Washington today will do 
less to prepare us for our future than money staying with America's 
earners. If the people knew enough to create the wealth in the first 
place, why then should Washington know best what to do with it?
  Finally, cutting taxes is necessary. We have the highest peacetime 
tax burden on the largest economy the world has ever known, and it 
still cannot support our current programs in the near future. Every 
credible analyst, both inside and outside of Government, knows that we 
cannot afford our entire entitlement programs tomorrow. Only 
politicians disagree. President Clinton's latest budget, according to 
CBO, contains $128 billion in new spending. If we cannot afford today's 
programs tomorrow, how can we seriously consider adding more? We must 
first reform what we have.
  In just 14 years, Social Security taxes will be unable to pay for 
benefits. The cost of both Medicare and Medicaid will shoot up. Tax 
increases will not possibly be able to pay for tomorrow's exploding 
costs without imploding the Nation's economy. If we follow the tax-hike 
route, we will not only not solve our problem, we will exacerbate it as 
slower economic growth leads to increased Federal costs.
  In short, tax hikes are a treadmill to oblivion. That is why I 
offered an amendment last year to require a supermajority in the Senate 
in order to raise taxes to pay for new spending.

  Instead of tax hikes tomorrow, we need to cut taxes today. We need to 
begin preparing the economic foundation now for a time when the ratio 
of workers paying taxes to the retirees receiving benefits is smaller 
than at any time in our Nation's history. This means increasing 
economic growth, and that means increasing investment.
  Investment does not come from Government, it comes from millions of 
men and women savings and from hundreds of thousands of businesses 
adding new equipment, things that cannot happen if the money needed for 
savings and investment in America is being consumed for spending right 
here in this city.
  Taxes are excessive. Excessive taxes are confiscatory. This 
confiscation by excessive taxation is immoral, both because of what it 
does to the person for whom excessive taxes are taken, and also because 
of what it does to the recipient.
  Excessive taxes are bad for the economy, and excessive taxes are 
unsustainable because of the fiscal path now charted by existing 
spending programs. In the face of this overwhelming evidence, what do 
the defenders of tax-and-spend-welfare state offer in return? The only 
thing they can: good intentions. But good intentions are not enough. 
Would you excuse those who deny you your money, your time, your 
property, the things you earned for your family, just because their 
intentions were good?
  Would you excuse those who denied basic common sense just because 
they meant well? Of course not. But we find ourselves too often 
paralyzed by the good intentions of counterfeit compassion, a 
compassion that argues there is never enough of other people's money to 
pay for their good wishes, a compassion that holds there is nothing so 
noble as a gift from the Government and something suspicious about 
those who succeed on their own.
  Good intentions should not be allowed to excuse Washington's 
indolence when it claims it cannot cut, that it cannot reform, that it 
cannot restrain the growth of programs it created so that people can 
keep more of what they have earned. Nor should Washington be allowed to 
say it cannot reform when it really means it will not reform.
  Washington will not reform because it imagines that it knows better, 
better than the tens of millions of taxpayers, workers, employers, 
savers and investors, but Washington, ladies and gentlemen, is wrong.
  Instead, Washington should be made to answer this very simple 
question: Why should those who did not earn, did not save and did not 
invest the money be more entitled to the returns it generates than 
those who did?
  We must finally say to Washington what Washington has been saying to 
taxpayers for decades: Sacrifice a little

[[Page S2356]]

bit. We must fundamentally change how the Tax Code works. It can no 
longer be allowed to penalize people. It should not feed off of the 
system. It should offer rewards. And that is what we must recognize. We 
can no longer have a Tax Code that treats success as a crime to be 
punished instead of a goal to be emulated. We can argue over what would 
be the best tax reform, but we must agree that most suggestions for 
reform would do better than we are doing now with the current Tax Code.
  We must simplify the system. It is bad enough that Washington takes 
more than it should without the additional insult of confusion. Last 
year, Americans spent $230.4 billion just complying with the Federal 
Tax Code. You can call that wasted money--I call that wasted money. 
That is $230.4 billion that Americans spent trying to stay within the 
law of the current Tax Code--a quarter of a trillion dollars, not 
paying taxes, just paying for the ability to pay taxes.
  We must lower the excessive tax burden. It is not enough to say that 
taxes are excessively high and then satisfy ourselves with not reducing 
the burden. Shifting and simplifying the load is not enough; we have to 
reduce it, along with simplification. We must end the abuses. As bad as 
the current code is, it is made intolerable when it is abused.

  In cases that we have heard in hearings in the Senate, we have seen 
the system not merely cross the line, but cross borders and time itself 
to become a system worthy of a totalitarian state of another time.
  When America fears its Government, as America fears the IRS, 
something is wrong. This is beyond unacceptable, and it has to be 
stopped. We must do whatever it takes to make sure that it does and 
that it never returns.
  To understand our duty in this, we must first look not to the Tax 
Code but back to America's foundations. Perhaps we in Idaho, my home 
State, have the advantage of doing this a little more clearly than 
some. Ours is a relatively new State of the Union, so perhaps we have a 
bit clearer view of the intention or the role that Government should 
take and the role that it ought to play in taxation.
  No one was ever inspired to come to America to work for someone else, 
and certainly not for Washington, DC. They came to work for themselves. 
People did not cross oceans, and later prairies, in search of a 
Government program. They came in search of opportunity. Today, we have 
a Tax Code that takes that opportunity away and makes their search 
endless.
  This country was not founded on a dream of paying excessive taxes. 
Rather, our country arose from a rebellion against paying excessive 
taxes. Today, we have a Government--not in London but right here in 
Washington, run not by a king but by ourselves--that demands from our 
citizens what our forefathers rejected.
  America was not founded on an ideal of relative freedom but on the 
principles we believe to be absolutes. Excessive taxes are wrong, and 
the taxes we now pay as Americans are excessive. This is absolutely 
wrong. It does not matter that other governments exist in other places 
that demand even more excessive taxes of their citizens. Our standard 
was never those, and it never should be. America's goal was always to 
lead and not to follow, and one does not lead by looking back at those 
who lag behind but forward to the goals that beckon us.
  There is no more basic test of Government than what it demands of its 
citizens. Failure to tax fairly is the worst of Government itself. 
Because taxpayers are honest, we must be prudent. Because taxpayers 
work hard, we must remind ourselves that they, not Washington, are 
entitled to the reward of those works. We are but stewards of their 
money and they trust us to use it properly. Sadly, we are abusing this 
trust through excessive taxes.
  In governing, we should never use the trust that our people give us 
against the people themselves.
  Mr. President, how much time do I have remaining?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Sessions). The Senator has 13 minutes 20 
seconds.

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