Policy of Taxation

Floor Speech

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Mr. McCOTTER. I thank the gentleman for yielding.

We've seen throughout our lifetimes the argument put forward that the way out of a fiscal mess is to raise taxes. And we've learned one thing: if they tax it and take it, they spend it. Over and over and over again the same siren song: government must increase revenues, that revenues are the problem. In short, the hardworking American people are the problem because they don't pay through the nose for the Federal Government's overspending.

I think the American people understand that we have not a revenue problem but a spending problem. So as we go forward, I think it is wise to remind many of our colleagues that if taxation is the road to prosperity, why do they not have 100 percent taxation? Because they know that it does not work. They know that it is a short-term expedient that has long-term damaging consequences to the economy. And as you go forward and you try to punish productivity, you produce unemployment, you produce poverty. In short, the cycle continues anew. As productivity drops, revenues drop. Then the calls for more revenue come in because the spending never stops, because the spending as we saw with the stimulus and other legislation of the past Democratic majority is that they will then spend even more money to try to get their way out of a crisis.

It was disappointing to see the President buy into the logic that your prosperity comes from the government rather than from the fruits of your own hard work, and that somehow the government is entitled to whatever of your money it deems necessary to continue its wasteful spending habits. Again, this is rejected.

As the gentleman from New Mexico understands, we live in a very difficult period of time. We are making the transition from an industrialized society to a globalized, consumer-driven economy. We have seen families across America and businesses across America make the difficult decision to survive, to compete. They have not only had to discard things that they wanted, but things that at times they felt they needed. And yet one entity, one entity above all has failed to emulate the difficult decisions made by men and women across America, and that entity is Big Government. And the reason is very simple: You can only spend what you make, but Big Government can spend what it takes from you.

And so today, we saw the President again make the argument that if we just took more from the American people or a certain segment of the American people--disregarding his rhetoric that we were all in this together. Evidently that is now as pass as some of his other pronunciations. The reality remains that we have to grow our way out of this. We have to adapt to a consumer-driven economy. We have to have a citizen-driven government, one that understands that the founding principles of this country are there for a reason; that now that we have reached the height of the zenith of the industrial welfare state that fosters dependence of individuals upon it rather than fostering and facilitating self-government and liberty and prosperity, that the day will come when this government and its fiscal recklessness proves unsustainable.

The question before us now is a very simple one: Will we responsibly and constructively address this crisis by performing our constitutional responsibilities and fulfilling the promises we made to our constituents, or will we go on with the same tired tax-and-spend policies that didn't work in the seventies, which in many cases were known quite simply as ``soak the rich; spend the bread''? Bad idea.

So to the gentleman from New Mexico, I thank him for his time and point out that the fiscal debate which will continue here tomorrow is a very simple one: You can protect the Big Government policies of the past or you

can look forward to a self-government, a citizen-driven government, a consumer-driven economy that unleashes the entrepreneurial genius of America and the diligence of workers and allows families to move into a future of liberty and prosperity. Or, in short, you can support the President and the politics of the past, or bankruptcy; or we can look forward and let the American people lead us into a new era of liberty and prosperity.

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