Ron Paul Talks abt Taxes (67 QUOTES)

* Taxes never create prosperity. Private-sector innovation and productivity are the engines that drive our economy, regardless of what politicians tell us.
* If you truly own your property, you have the right to dispose of it any way you wish. You can sell it, give it away, or direct who will receive it when you die. This control is the essence of property rights. If you can't control what happens to your property, you don't really own it.
* Astonishingly, American taxpayers now will be forced to finance a multi-billion dollar jobs program in Iraq. Suddenly the war is about jobs. We export our manufacturing jobs to Asia, and now we plan to export our welfare jobs to Iraq, all at the expense of the poor and the middle class here at home.
* Deficits mean future tax increases, pure and simple. Deficit spending should be viewed as a tax on future generations, and politicians who create deficits should be exposed as tax hikers.
* The large majority of Americans are sick and tired of being overtaxed and despise the income tax and the inheritance tax. The majority of Americans know government programs fail to achieve their goals and waste huge sums of money.
* One thing is clear: The Founding Fathers never intended a nation where citizens pay nearly half of everything they earn to government.
* Deficits mean future tax increases, pure and simple. Deficit spending should be viewed as a tax on future generations, and politicians who create deficits should be exposed as tax hikers."
* The large majority of Americans are sick and tired of being overtaxed and despise the income tax and the inheritance tax. The majority of Americans know government programs fail to achieve their goals and waste huge sums of money.
* The American people are generous – there’s no reason why we can’t help feed the world, and we do. But there’s no justification to use violence against our people to extract money to do good overseas.
* Mr. Speaker, I once again find myself compelled to vote against the annual budget resolution for a very simple reason: it makes government bigger.
* Instead of simply debating spending levels, we ought to be debating whether the departments, agencies, and programs funded by the budget should exist at all.
* When the federal government spends more each year than it collects in tax revenues, it has three choices: It can raise taxes, print money, or borrow money.
* My personal finances would be very good if I borrowed a million dollars every month. But, someday, the bills will become due. And the bills will come due in this country, and then we’ll have to pay for it. We can’t afford this war, and we can’t afford the entitlement system.
* We have to live within our means. You can’t print money out of the blue, and think you can print your money into prosperity.
* The theory of the IRS is rather repugnant to me because the assumption is made that I, the government, owns 100% of your income and I permit you to keep 5%, 10% or 20%. You’re vulnerable, you’ve sold out. The government can take 80% if they want, which they did at one time.
* You don’t have a right to the fruits of somebody elses labor. You don’t have a right to a house, you don’t have a right to a job, you don’t have a right to medical care. You have a right to your life, you have your right to your liberty, you have a right to keep what your earn. And that’s what produces prosperity.
* Deficits mean future tax increases, pure and simple.
* You don’t cost the government money, the government costs you money!
* While I believe strongly in the moral value of helping the less fortunate, charity must come voluntarily from the heart, not under threat from the IRS."
* The reality is that most working Americans lose about half of their incomes to federal, state, and local taxes.
* Government, through its taxes, restrictive regulations, corporate subsidies, racial set-asides, and welfare programs, plays far too large a role in determining who succeeds and who fails in our society.
* Government entitlement spending is like a runaway freight train headed straight at American taxpayers.
* The mentality in Washington is simple: avoid hard choices at all costs; spend money at will; ignore deficits; inflate the money supply as needed; and trust that the whole mess somehow will be taken care of by unprecedented economic growth in the future.
* When we cut the size of government, our taxes will fall. When we reduce the power of the federal bureaucracy, the cost of government will plummet. And when we firmly fix our eyes, undistracted, on the principles of liberty, Americans truly will be free. That should be our new declaration.
* Imagine how quickly Americans would demand lower taxes and spending if they had to write the federal government a check each month.
* Arrogant is the only word to describe a Congress that cares so little about its own taxpaying citizens while pretending to know what is best for the world.
* For more than six months of every year the average American toils not for his family, for his needs, or for his future. No, for the first six months of the year the average American works to pay the cost of federal, state, and local taxes and regulations. From New Year's Day until about the 4th of July, you worked to pay for government. This is unconscionable.
* Our Founding Fathers no doubt would be embarrassed at our squandering of their vision. After all, they revolted at a comparable tax rate in the single digits or less. And yet we willingly suffer an effective tax rate of 50%, and much more in many cases. They tyranny of the Crown has been replaced by the tyranny of the federal government in Washington.
* We are not slaves, but many feel they are indentured servants to government. And by and large it has happened with our willing consent. We have knowingly compromised our sacred liberty for temporary promises of security or false prosperity.
* It is clear that interventionism leads to the perceived need for more interventionism, which leads to more conflict and to increased resentment and anti-Americanism. It is an endless cycle and the American taxpayer is always left holding the bill.
* It's easy for elected officials in Washington to tell Americans that government will do whatever it takes to defeat terrorism, but it's your freedom and your tax dollars at stake- not theirs.
* I'm for lowering everybody's federal tax bill, because I believe every dollar left in the private economy benefits all Americans much more than a dollar sent to Washington.
* The money people earn is their own and they have a moral right to keep as much of it as possible. It does not belong to Congress.
* Today, our phony allies are bought and paid for with billions of your tax dollars, but prove less than trustworthy when trouble arises.
* Foreign aid is not only unConstitutional, but also exceedingly unwise. It creates the worst kind of entangling alliances that President Washington warned about. It doesn't buy us any real allies, but instead encourages false friendships, dependency, and a sense of entitlement among the recipients. It also causes resentment among nations that receive none, or less than they feel they deserve. Above all, however, it is simply unconscionable to tax American citizens and send their money overseas. We have enough problems of our own here at home, and those dollars should be returned to taxpayers or spent on legitimate Constitutional activities.
* The desire to save money and build a better life is intrinsically human, and no society that punishes saving can remain prosperous for long.
* Not only does government spend far too much of your money, it spends the money badly. Once we as a society accepted the notion that Congress could fund programs not authorized in the Constitution, the sky was the limit- and we've reached that limit today.
* The only thing we know for sure about the federal budget is that it will go up each year unless and until voters remove the politicians who insist on taxing, spending, and borrowing us to death.
* The American dream is based on making a better life for one's children, despite the empty rhetoric of the class-warfare politicians in Washington. Building wealth is not sinister, it is admirable. Our tax rules should encourage the decidedly American virtue of saving for the future.
* We cannot make ourselves safer simply by creating new departments, spending more taxpayer money on federal police, or sending more troops into yet another foreign land. Real homeland security requires a reexamination of our policies and priorities abroad, and a commitment to the Constitution at home.
* When taxes are reduced on individuals, they have more money to spend, save, or invest. When taxes are reduced on companies, they have more money to hire new employees, increase wages, or pay dividends to investors. Since all economic growth depends on private capital, the goal of any economic stimulus plan must be to leave more private capital in the hands of investors
* Remember, the private marketplace is always far more efficient that any government program. You know better than the government how to spend your own money, and the same principle applies to the economy as a whole. Spending is spending, even when politicians call it "investing in America" or "stimulus." Government cannot simply spend us into prosperity.
* The only way to end the unconscionable waste is to drastically reduce federal revenues by cutting taxes. Voters need to regain control of the nation's finances by rejecting the big spenders at the ballot box.
* The harmful effects of the income tax are obvious. First and foremost, it has enabled government to expand far beyond its proper Constitutional limits, regulating virtually every aspect of our lives. It has given government a claim on our lives and work, destroying our privacy in the process.
* The ridiculous complexity of the tax laws makes compliance a nightmare for both individuals and businesses. All things considered, our Founders would be dismayed by the income tax mess and the tragic loss of liberty which results.
* America without an income tax would be far more prosperous and far more free, but we must be prepared to fight to regain the liberty we have lost incrementally over the past century.
* Congress and the American people do not share the same goals. The real enemy of tax reform is the spending culture in Washington.
* The truth of the matter is that the economy is hurt when the government takes money out of the paychecks of private citizens that they would otherwise spend, save or invest. The government has never created anything, much less economic prosperity. The government can only take from one and give to another.
* I have never met a tax cut I didn't like.
* The American people are over-taxed. The average person pays more to their government than they do for the combined cost of food, clothing, shelter, entertainment and education in a year.
* Federal spending must be dramatically reduced so that all Americans can go back to working for themselves instead of working to pay their taxes.
* Helping Americans improve themselves by reducing their taxes will make our country stronger.
* True patriotism today has gotten a bad name, at least from the government and the press. Those who now challenge the unConstitutional methods of imposing an income tax on us, or force us to use a monetary system designed to serve the rich at the expense of the poor, are routinely condemned.
* A free society rejects all notions of involuntary servitude whether by draft or the confiscation of the fruits of our labor through the personal income tax.
* Today we are the strongest economy in the world, and have much to be proud of, but Congress doesn’t seem to understand that we did not tax our way here.
* The power to tax is the power to destroy.
* If you think that government has to take care of us, from cradle to grave, and if you think our government should police the world and spend hundreds of billions of dollars on a foreign policy that we cannot manage, you can't get rid of the IRS; but, if you want to lower taxes and if you want the government to quit printing the money to come up with shortfall and cause all the inflation, you have to change policy.
* When the federal government spends more each year than it collects in tax revenues, it has three choices: It can raise taxes, print money, or borrow money. While these actions may benefit politicians, all three options are bad for average Americans. Deficits mean future tax increases, pure and simple. Deficit spending should be viewed as a tax on future generations, and politicians who create deficits should be exposed as tax hikers.
* I lean towards a flat tax but I wanna make it real flat, like zero.
* Government spending is always a tax burden on the American people and is never equally or fairly distributed. The poor and low-middle income workers always suffer the most from the deceitful tax of inflation and borrowing.
* The theory of the IRS is rather repugnant to me, because the assumption is made that I, the government, owns 100% of your income and I permit you to keep 5%, 10%, or 20%.
* I want the money to be held in the hands of people so that people can come up with new ideas and go out and start new businesses.
* When I say cut taxes, I don't mean fiddle with the code. I mean abolish the income tax and the IRS, and replace them with nothing.
* We have allowed our nation to be overtaxed and overburdened and overran by beurocrates. The Founders would be ashamed by what we're putting up with.
* The history of the 20th century shows that the Constitution is violated most often by Congress during times of crisis; accordingly, most of our worst unConstitutional agencies and programs began during the two world wars and the Depression. Ironically, the Constitution itself was conceived in a time of great crisis. The founders intended its provision to place inviolable restrictions on what the federal government could do even in times of great distress. America must guard against current calls for government to violate the Constitution- break the law- in the name of law enforcement.
* Nothing would please the terrorists more than if we willingly give up some of our cherished liberties while defending ourselves from their threat.
* Do they think if we destroy our freedoms for the terrorists they will no longer have a reason to attack us? This seems the epitome of cowardice coming from those who claim a monopoly on patriotic courage.