Tax Cut Quotes

#1. Why does a slight tax increase cost you two hundred dollars and a substantial tax cut save you thirty cents?

Peg Bracken

#2. In 2001, Republicans used reconciliation to pass President Bush's $1.35 trillion tax cut that mainly benefited the wealthy.

Bernie Sanders

#3. Why would we want to keep a tax cut that's failed? Why would we not want to go back to the Clinton tax code? And why would we not want to help every family more with a health-care plan like mine? Let's help average people. Let's be Democrats.

Dick Gephardt

#4. There are more people at Obama's table offering ideas than there were five years ago, but when it came to facing up to the Republicans' threat to force a double-dip recession if they didn't get their millionaires' tax cut, they still amounted to nothing. And therein lies our fundamental problem.

Eric Alterman

#5. I think that for the next short period of time, our No. 1 priority is Congress needs to do its work and extend the payroll tax cut.

Jacob Lew

#6. It appears that no one is so unfortunate that he or she is exempt from spending cuts, while at the same time no one is so fortunate as to be ineligible for a tax cut

Jonathan Schell

#7. The politicians say 'we' can't afford a tax cut. Maybe we can't afford the politicians.

Steve Forbes

#8. Every tax cut I call for is targeted, it's responsible and it is paid for within my balanced budget plan. My tax cuts will not undermine our economy. They will speed economic growth.

William J. Clinton

#9. We will also never bring up the permanent tax cut the president is advocating.

Tom Daschle

#10. My tax cut would cut hundreds of billions of dollars. So to do it, you have to be willing to cut spending, too. But if you were to cut hundreds of billions of dollars in taxes, that money's left in communities.

Rand Paul

#11. I want to make it very clear that this middle-class tax cut, in my view, is central to any attempt we're going to make to have a short-term economic strategy and a long-term fairness strategy, which is part of getting this country going again.

William J. Clinton

#12. Payments to the disabled are getting slashed and people like me are getting a tax cut. Who could possibly think that is a good thing?

Mark Haddon

#13. Make no mistake, if the payroll-tax cut is extended, it will become permanent. Social Security will become another welfare program as the tie between what someone pays and what they receive gets broken.

Ari Fleischer

#14. I don't know how anyone can keep a straight face and say they are for deficit reduction while they insist on a permanent tax cut for the wealthiest Americans, completely unpaid for.

Claire McCaskill

#15. I'm Bill Clinton and I think you deserve a change. That's why I've offered a plan to get the economy moving again, starting with a middle-class tax cut ...

William J. Clinton

#16. When people see the budget, they're going to say, 'Oh, my God, I wanted a tax cut, but I didn't know what you were going to do to health care and to Medicare and national defense.'

John Breaux

#17. My healthcare plan puts more money into average families' pockets than the Bush tax cuts ... He's got a lousy tax cut. It's only good for the super wealthy. I've got a tax cut that will help ordinary people.

Dick Gephardt

#18. Many Republicans have what I call a 'tax-cut syndrome' where they have never seen a tax cut they didn't really like and didn't see a tax increase they didn't hate and do everything they could to block.

Peter George Peterson

#19. The House okayed the gasoline tax cut, which will increase the deficit, line the pockets of the oil companies, and hurt the environment; Dole said that if there was just some way this could interfere with people's sex lives, it would be perfect legislation.

Bill Maher

#20. In all, 62 percent of the budget cuts would come from low-income programs. Yet at the same time, the Republican budget would provide a substantial tax cut to the rich - who are already taking home an almost unprecedented share of the nation's total income.

Robert B. Reich

#21. In the Iowa senate, I helped pass the largest tax cut in state history - returning over four billion dollars in savings and putting more money back in the pockets of hard-working Iowa families.

Joni Ernst

#22. Look, only in Washington is not raising taxes considered a tax cut. Nobody's getting a tax cut here. We're not cutting taxes. We're preventing tax increases from occurring.

Paul Ryan

#23. Conservatives need to figure out a way to motivate by reason and persuade through emotion. Meaning that when they talk about our issues, it can't come from a selfish place - "Give me a tax cut. Where's my tax cut." We have to get back to that "shining city on the hill."

Andrea Tantaros

#24. Here's what I can tell the American people: 95 percent of you will get a tax cut. And if you make less than $250,000, less than a quarter-million dollars a year, then you will not see one dime's worth of tax increase.

Barack Obama

#25. Spending and tax cut decisions must be both fiscally responsible and fair to our working families. I believe that fiscal responsibility is the way to create prosperity for America and secure the retirement of America's seniors.

Blanche Lincoln

#26. So let's give another big tax cut to the super-rich. That'll teach bin Laden a lesson he won't soon forget.

Kurt Vonnegut

#27. We're going to have a tax cut. Today's American family is overtaxed at all levels.

Dick Armey

#28. Giving someone a one-time stimulus check, or a one-time tax cut that expires doesn't allow the predictability that business needs.

Rand Paul

#29. We can have tax cuts, but when we have tax cuts and do not have a surplus, the amount of the tax cut goes straight to the bottom line, adds to the deficit, and the deficit adds to the national debt, and sooner or later, the debt has to be paid.

John Spratt

#30. Democratic priorities remain clear: to provide a tax cut for working families, to promote policies that produce jobs and economic growth, and to assist millions of our fellow Americans who have lost their jobs through no fault of their own.

Nancy Pelosi

#31. The NRA was one of the items that we pointed to when we added money to the labor, health and Education appropriations bill by reducing the size of the tax cut.

Dave Obey

#32. Contrary to the myth that Mr. Bush cut taxes only for the wealthy, the 2001 tax cut reduced taxes for every income-tax payer in the country.

Ari Fleischer

#33. This is such music to my ears. James Carville advocating a tax cut to stimulate the economy.

Mary Matalin

#34. As president, I would promote a Fair and Flat Tax plan, known as the 'EZ Tax.' My tax plan would be the largest tax cut in American history, reforming individual, business, and worker taxes.

Rand Paul

#35. Bush is giving the rich a tax cut instead of putting that cut in the pockets of working people.

Carol Moseley Braun

#36. I think the tax cut is ridiculous but so am I.

Randy Newman

#37. Without the triggers, that tax cut is irreponsible fiscal policy. Eventually, I think that will be the consensus view.

Alan Greenspan

#38. Happiness statistics may be most valuable in smaller, local discussions. Understanding how different sorts of programs affect the well-being of citizens would be enormously helpful to a mayor choosing between building a new bridge or offering a tax cut.

Adam Davidson

#39. Hearing politicians tell us we can't afford a tax cut is like listening to a glutton tell you he can't afford a diet. In no other context do people talk about paying for money they don't have. I can't pay for your refusal to give me money because I need a yacht.

Ann Coulter

#40. Our intention is to give people, however you might stylize it, a tax cut or a pay raise.

Paul O'Neill

#41. Well, you know, we've got a lot of stimulus in the economy already from the tax cut, from the lowered interest rates, and also from the refinancing of mortgages.

Franklin Raines

#42. I support responsible spending, and balancing the budget, but this tax cut and the budget cuts of last month accomplish neither of these goals.

Marty Meehan

#43. From New Hampshire forward, for reasons that absolutely mystified me, the press thought the most important issue in the race was the middle class tax cut. I never did meet any voter who thought that.

William J. Clinton

#44. On Capitol Hill, the Republican-controlled House voted mostly along party lines tonight to pass President Bush's federal budget blueprint. This includes his big tax cut plan, partly bankrolled, critics say, through cuts in many federal aid programs for children and education.

Dan Rather

#45. Washington continues to encourage ever more ill-considered lending in a misguided attempt to stave off needed market corrections. The currently proposed combination of a nationwide infrastructure spending orgy plus tax-cut bribes does nothing to remedy that.

Michelle Malkin

#46. The purpose of a tax cut is to leave more money where it belongs: in the hands of the working men and working women who earned it in the first place

Bob Dole

#47. A money-financed tax cut is essentially equivalent to Milton Friedman's famous 'helicopter drop' of money.

Ben Bernanke

#48. New rumors that Saddam Hussein is planning to flee to a castle in Libya with 10 billion dollars. Now President Bush doesn't know whether to nuke him or give him a tax cut.

Craig Kilborn

#49. There are some Republicans who say that any time you raise new revenue, you have to have a tax cut to match it. I am not one of those Republicans.

Jeff Flake

#50. Let's restore sanity and fairness to the tax cut conversation. We simply cannot afford to hand over the bank vault to our nation's millionaires and billionaires while the middle class picks up spare change.

Paul Tonko

#51. Unfortunately the Republican tax cut will deny important revenues to many states facing their own deficits. This will create greater pressure for higher state and local taxes.

Dick Durbin

#52. The anti-tax-cut, soft-on-defense, big-spending Democrats will take the Democratic Party to the edge and maybe over.

Joe Lieberman

#53. I say I don't need a tax cut. It will not do me any more good. I can't buy more, I can't eat more, I can't do more, and I want it distributed among the ordinary people who work every day.

Frank Lautenberg

#54. I'm a different kind of Republican. I've introduced a five-year balanced budget. I've introduced the largest tax cut in our history. I stood for ten and a half hours on the Senate floor to defend your right to be left alone.

Rand Paul

#55. Not continuing a tax cut is not technically a tax increase.

Grover Norquist

#56. Many of us were kind of irritated with Obama for larding it with tax cut, which we didn't think was going to be stimulative.

Barack Obama

#57. A tax cut is really one of the anecdotes to coming out of an economic illness.

George W. Bush

#58. A tax cut to compensate for a tax increase is not a cut - it's a con.

Tony Abbott

#59. What we're discussing privately and publicly, is a budget which is a blueprint for the future which creates jobs, which educates our children, which provides healthcare for all Americans, which takes our deficit down, which gives a tax cut for 95% of the American people.

Nancy Pelosi

#60. Health care is still the number-one issue out there. Someone who seizes it, I think, will do very well in an election. Let's face it: Clinton's two big issues were the middle class tax cut, which he dropped, wisely, at the time to help reduce the deficit, and health care. That's what he ran on.

Russ Feingold

#61. Democrats are not about to nominate anyone who backs the tax cut, and Americans are not going to elect anyone who favors a tax increase.

Dick Morris

#62. I've been told that some members of Congress disagree with my tax cut proposal. Well, you know it's been said that taxation is the art of plucking feathers without killing the bird. It's time they realized the bird just doesn't have any feathers left.

Ronald Reagan

#63. If a tax cut increases government revenues, you haven't cut taxes enough.

Milton Friedman

#64. You've got to either say you're going to cut taxes and find some spending cuts. I think we ought to reform long-term entitlement spending in the country, but you can't out of one side of your mouth say, 'Yes, we're for tax cuts, we're for spending discipline, and we're for bringing down the debt.'

Harold Ford Jr.

#65. That tax relief can spur the economy and thereby benefit all Americans is something that Washington Democrats used to understand. President Kennedy, for example, aggressively cut taxes after being elected to stimulate the economy as a means of helping all Americans.

Mike Bouchard

#66. And I think most people in this country want to see a president that's got the courage to say we're going to cut the tax burden, and reduce the regulatory climate, and we're going to get Americans working.

Rick Perry

#67. Make no mistake, the point of cutting the personal income tax and the capital gains cut is to send an unmistakable message to business.

Bill Richardson

#68. By the way, 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.

Ron Paul

#69. God put the Republican Party on earth to cut taxes. If they don't do that, they have no useful function.

Robert Novak

#70. The middle classes shouldn't be getting tax cuts, while those in tough, poorly paid jobs, who are already running out of money at the start of the month, are getting their benefits cut. That's not one-nation conservatism; it's two nations conservatism.

Tim Montgomerie

#71. Thatcher had broken the miners' union, all but crushed the Labour Party, dramatically cut back the welfare state, even flirted with a poll tax. In the circles I ran in, Reagan was mocked as a childish dolt. Thatcher was despised.

Jon Weisman

#72. Yeah, it's real easy to look in the mirror and be proud when you're wearing pleated shorts. And you know what's really pathetic? I don't even have any dividends to get tax-decreased. When'll they cut taxes on not-having-health-insurancends?

David Rees

#73. Everyone wants a more simple tax system. But if this means that certain tax breaks have to be cut, people are no longer so enthusiastic.

Angela Merkel

#74. Decisions to cut aid for the terminally ill, for the elderly, for dependent children, for food stamps, even school lunches, are being made by men with full stomachs who live in comfortable houses with two cars and umpteen tax shelters. None of them go hungry to bed at night.

Audre Lorde

#75. Legislation to create a new 10 percent tax bracket, reduce the marriage penalty, cut the tax rate on dividends and capital gains, and increase the child tax credit have been essential elements in this economic expansion.

Roger Wicker

#76. Every time we've cut the capital gains tax, the economy has grown. Whenever we raise the capital gains tax, it's been damaged. It's one of those taxes that most clearly damages economic growth and jobs.

Grover Norquist

#77. Many attempts had been made by colonial legislatures to cut off or to tax the importation of slaves.

Albert Bushnell Hart

#78. We vetoed five income tax increases during my time as governor. We cut business taxes $2.3 billion, and we cut regulation by one-third of what my predecessor put in place.

Chris Christie

#79. Cutting taxes is not bad. But if you cut taxes on the wealthy, which is what they wanted to do, you're not helping people who need better schools and better infrastructure and healthcare. You're basically robbing the middle class and the poor to provide tax cuts to the rich.

Robert Reich

#80. Many of you are well enough off that the tax cuts may have helped you. We're saying that for America to get back on track, we're probably going to cut that short and not give it to you. We're going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good.

Hillary Clinton

#81. I don't believe there's a red state in America where people believe you should cut Medicare, Social Security and veterans' benefits rather than doing away with corporate tax loopholes.

Bernie Sanders

#82. Hy is it you can impose a new tax and keep your economy growing? Only if you cut other taxes by exactly the same amount. The problem with carbon taxes around the world has been you dump a new tax onto the economy and it's just adding more tax.

Christy Clark

#83. The clearest way to cut some of this fiscal drag would be to extend the current payroll tax holiday and increase it - as proposed by President Barack Obama. This would cut the fiscal drag by almost half.

Mark Zandi

#84. You have to take away some of tax breaks for the wealthy, and you have to cut back on some entitlements. Because, unless we do all of these things, it just doesn't work. And what's good theater and what's good politics isn't necessarily good economic policy.

Michael Bloomberg

#85. My heart is a weatherballoon caught in an updraft of a chinese tax percentage, the tax percentages are unequivocaaaaaaaaaal, Unequivocaaaaaaaaal. This is the sort of lyrics you could never think of, loser. Here's a razorblade go cut yourself

Thom Yorke

#86. It is hard to be enthusiastic about the economy's prospects when house prices are falling: Households spend less, small business owners can't use homes as collateral for loans and local governments are forced to cut jobs and programs as property-tax revenue disappears.

Mark Zandi

#87. One of the things we worry about when we cut the tax on gasoline is that it basically stimulates additional use.

Edward Lazear

#88. Every time you cut programs, you take away a person who has a vested interest in high taxes and you put him on the tax rolls and make him a taxpayer. A farmer on subsidies is part welfare bum, whereas a free-market farmer is a small businessman with a gun.

Grover Norquist

#89. What Governor Romney is proposing is an across-the-board cut in marginal tax rates for households, every household in America by 20 percent. And we'll have to broaden the base to pay for that. Also, a very deep cut in the corporate rate.

Glenn Hubbard

#90. Well, I think the reality is that as you study - when President Kennedy cut marginal tax rates, when Ronald Reagan cut marginal tax rates, when President Bush imposed those tax cuts, they actually generated economic growth. They expanded the economy. They expand tax revenues.

Mike Pence

#91. They are having quite an argument over Treasury Secretary Mellon's Tax Bill. Mr. Mellon wants to cut the surtax on the rich, and leave it as is on the poor, as there is more poor than rich. I suppose the majority will win.

Will Rogers

#92. To reduce deficit spending and our enormous debt, you reign in spending. You cut the budget. You don't take more from the private sector and grow government with it. And that's exactly what Obama has in mind with this expiration of Bush tax cuts proposal of his.

Sarah Palin