[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 44 (Tuesday, April 21, 1998)]
[House]
[Page H2064]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




            SUPPORT THE TWO-THIRDS TAX LIMITATION AMENDMENT

  (Mr. BARTON of Texas asked and was given permission to address the 
House for 1 minute.)
  Mr. BARTON of Texas. Mr. Speaker, tomorrow we are going to have the 
tax limitation amendment to the Constitution on the floor of the House 
for a vote. It is a pretty straightforward amendment. It says, to raise 
your taxes, it will take a two-thirds vote of the House and a two-
thirds vote of the Senate.
  For those of you that had fractions in elementary school, you know 
that two-thirds is a larger fraction than one-half. If you translate 
that into math, it means, in the House, it will take 292 votes to raise 
your taxes and, in the Senate, it will take 67 votes to raise your 
taxes.
  The tax burden on the American people has gone up from 1 percent on 
the first $3,000 of net income in 1914 to over, if you are a senior 
citizen, over 85 percent of any income if you are filing jointly with a 
spouse of over $34,000 in income. That is an increase of the marginal 
tax rate of over 4,000 percent in the last 75 years. It is time to stop 
that.
  Let us pass the two-thirds tax limitation amendment to the 
Constitution of the United States tomorrow afternoon on this floor and 
send it to the Senate; and, hopefully, they will pass it and send it to 
the States.

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