[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 145 (1999), Part 12]
[House]
[Page 17018]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                 GOVERNMENT TAXATION IS A FREEDOM ISSUE

  (Mr. PITTS asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. PITTS. Mr. Speaker, George Washington, the Father of our Country, 
spoke constantly about the importance of the American character. 
Indeed, his farewell address to the Nation focused on just that issue.
  George Washington wanted to leave behind a people that believed in 
the experiment of self-government that existed nowhere else in the 
world, and he believed that the American experiment in self-government 
could easily slide into tyranny if Americans were not jealous of their 
liberties and ever vigilant against abuses of government power.
  Our Nation was born in rebellion, after all, against taxes which 
people thought were unjust, and tax revolts have been a part of our 
history from the Whiskey Rebellion in 1794 to Proposition 13 in 
California in 1978.
  In recent years, more and more of my liberal friends have taken to 
labeling calls for lower taxes as greed and irresponsible. But to 
Republicans, government taxation is a freedom issue. The question, the 
critical question, is who decides what to do with the fruits of 
people's labor, our government masters or the people who labor to 
produce them?
  Constituents, it is your money, not Washington's. Return it before 
they spend it.

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