[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 67 (Tuesday, May 11, 1999)]
[House]
[Pages H2966-H2967]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        NATIONAL TAX FREEDOM DAY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from South Dakota (Mr. Thune) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. THUNE. Mr. Speaker, today is national Tax Freedom Day. That means 
that if you are an American taxpayer, every penny you have earned from 
January 1 through the end of your workday yesterday has gone to pay the 
cost of government. Today is the first day that the American taxpayer 
starts working for him or herself. Today is Tax Freedom Day.
  Now, that is the good news. The bad news is that Tax Freedom Day 
falls later and later every year. This year Tax Freedom Day falls one 
day later than it did last year, which means the government has grown 
fast enough over the last year alone to take in one more 8-hour day of 
the American taxpayer's paycheck. That is wrong.
  Now, a lot of people in this country do not think they need tax 
relief. They think, I do okay. I pay my bills. I take care of my 
family. They have most of the things they need. Well, I am here to tell 
you today that if you do not think your taxes are too high, you do not 
know how many times you have been paying your taxes.
  I would like to walk you through the average American taxpayer's 
average American day just so that people in this country realize how 
much they are actually paying in the form of taxes.
  It starts when the alarm goes off in the morning. You hit the alarm 
clock. You paid a sales tax on the alarm clock. As soon as you turn on 
the light, you are paying a utility tax. You walk in the bathroom, turn 
on the faucet to brush your teeth, or at least your coworkers hope you 
will, you pay a utility tax on the water. You go in to get ready to go 
to work. You put on your suit or your work clothes on which you paid a 
sales tax.
  You drive to work. You grab your car keys. You probably paid some 
form of sales tax or excise tax on the car and on the tags and on the 
license that you need to drive it. You stop at the gas station to put 
gas in your car. You pay the gas tax every time you fill up at the 
pump.
  You probably stop along the way somewhere to have a nutritious 
breakfast, maybe coffee and a doughnut, on which again you likely paid 
the sales tax.
  You finally get to work. Here is where it really starts adding up. 
Because from the moment you walk in the door, every second of that 8-
hour day is subject to the income tax. In fact, you will spend the next 
2 hours and 51 minutes of your day working to pay taxes. That is more 
time than you spend working to pay for food, clothing and shelter 
combined.
  But maybe it is your lucky day. Today could be payday. So you look at 
your pay stub and you see that Social Security, which you may never see 
depending on how old you are, and FICA and everything else is taken 
out. If you have enough left over you may go out pay your bills and buy 
your lunch somewhere, maybe at McDonald's again, on which you pay sales 
tax. You stop at the bank at the end of the day to deposit what is left 
of your paycheck in a savings account on which you will pay income tax 
on the interest.
  Finally, you get home, your castle, on which you pay property tax. 
You say hello to your spouse and discover, of course, that even love is 
not free because when you got married you paid a hefty marriage penalty 
tax.

[[Page H2967]]

  You decide to call your mother after dinner and find out how she 
might be doing. You pay a utility tax when you use the phone.

                              {time}  1915

  Finally it is your time. It is time to relax, sit down. So you kick 
up, turn on Sportscenter to see how your favorite team might be doing.
  In our case in South Dakota it happens to be the Minnesota Twins. Mr. 
Speaker, they are in last place. If that were not bad enough, you had 
to pay a cable tax to find out that information.
  Finally, the day ends back where it began, as you lay down on your 
bed, close your eyes and go to sleep. And guess what? Just on the 
chance that you do not wake up before the morning you get hit one last 
time by the government; yes, with the death tax.
  Now this is sort of a humorous way of looking at this issue, but 
there is a very serious message here, and that is the tax burden on the 
average American has grown every year, and Tax Freedom Day now falls 11 
days later than it did back in 1993. In South Dakota we do a little bit 
better. Our Tax Freedom Day comes on May 2, which is about a week 
earlier than the Nation Tax Freedom Day, but it still is not right to 
spend more than 4 months of every year working for someone other than 
yourself.
  South Dakotans know how to spend their money, they know what their 
family and their community needs, and they ought to be allowed to keep 
more of the income that they earn to spend it on the things that they 
need most. Maybe that is the children's education, maybe it is to make 
a down payment on a house, a farm or a ranch, or maybe it is time to 
trade in the old car and get a new one. Maybe it is time to invest in a 
favorite charity or perhaps church, and maybe it is time for you or 
your spouse just to cut down on some of the hours or quit working 
altogether and spend more time at home with the children.
  The point is, Mr. Speaker, that it is the American people's money, 
and they should be spending it according to what is in their best 
interests.
  We cut taxes in 1997 for the first time since 1981. We need to do it 
again. People of this country work hard, they need to keep more of what 
they earn, and every time they send money to Washington they are giving 
up power and control. Mr. Speaker, we want to see that the power and 
control stays at home with the American family, with the individual and 
with the community.
  Mr. Speaker, I hope that we can work in a very deliberate way to 
bring about additional tax relief for hard-working Americans.

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