[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 157 (2011), Part 4]
[House]
[Page 5675]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                                FAIR TAX

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Georgia (Mr. Woodall) for 3 minutes.
  Mr. WOODALL. Mr. Speaker, you've heard it a lot of different ways 
this morning. Our challenge is not that we tax too little. Our 
challenge is that we spend too much, and we're taking steps to make 
that happen. But we do tax incorrectly. We do tax in a way that 
challenges the patience, the tolerance and the intellect of millions of 
Americans every year. We're coming up on that.
  One week from today is Tax Day, April 15, that day that folks dread 
year after year after year after year. One of the things that makes Tax 
Day so complicated is the exceptions, the exemptions, the loopholes and 
those special favors that get written into the Code year after year 
after year after year.
  I want to associate myself with the comments from the previous 
speaker, the gentleman from California. And we've talked about the very 
serious--the very serious--discussion of the budget that's been going 
on in the Budget Committee. I'm pleased to be a member of the Budget 
Committee.
  Bloomberg came out with a report this morning, $2.9 trillion in 
special tax breaks, loopholes and exemptions erased in that budget. Not 
that taxes go up for Americans, but that taxes get simpler for 
Americans and fairer for Americans by taking away $2.9 trillion in 
special favors and special exemptions.
  There's a proposal that goes even further, and I want to mention it 
now a week out from Tax Day, and that's H.R. 25, the Fair Tax. It's a 
bill that started with only two cosponsors, one Democrat and one 
Republican. It grew to two Democrats and two Republicans, and then it 
grew to four Democrats and four Republicans. Now there are 60 
cosponsors in the House, five in the United States Senate, the most 
widely cosponsored fundamental tax reform bill in this Congress.
  And it does this: It abolishes income taxes and replaces them with 
consumption taxes, because the power to tax is the power to destroy. 
And what we destroy in this country is productivity. We're the only 
OECD country on the planet that doesn't have a consumption tax, the 
only one that punishes our producers instead of taxing our consumers. 
And it eliminates not $2.9 trillion in loopholes as the budget does, 
but 100 percent of every corporate loophole.
  We've heard it on this floor again and again: Loopholes for oil 
companies, loopholes for this company. It eliminates every single 
corporate tax break in existence today. And it eliminates them for 
individuals as well in favor of a simple, low-rate personal consumption 
tax.
  On Tax Day, we talk about the income tax. The largest tax 80 percent 
of American families pay is the payroll tax. Everybody in here who's 
got a job has seen that FICA line. You may not add it up, but it is the 
largest tax that 80 percent of Americans pay. And there is not a single 
bill on this floor that deals with that except the Fair Tax, which 
abolishes that tax so you get to keep what you earn so that nobody 
touches your paycheck before you do.
  As you finalize your tax forms over the next 7 days on your way to 
April 15, I want you to think about what could be different. I want you 
to think about how, with the passage of H.R. 25, April 15 could just be 
another spring day.

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