Tax The Rich Quotes

#1. The U.S. have printed money; they intend to tax the rich in order to avoid the fiscal cliff. These are things that sees anyone who dares to propose them in Greece and Europe labeled an extremist, when at the same time, it's what Obama does.

Alexis Tsipras

#2. The place where you got to get revenues has to come from the middle class. That's where the huge number of people that are there. So the system does need to be revamped [to tax the rich less and the middle class more.]

Orrin Hatch

#3. You can tax the rich all you want. The problem is there aren't enough of the rich.

Bob Packwood

#4. If we're not going to tax the rich anymore, we're going to create class warfare.

Lewis Black

#5. If you believe Jesus ever had a good word for war or torture or tax cuts for the rich, or raping the earth, or refusing water to dying migrants, then you might as well believe bunnies lay painted eggs.

Bill Maher

#6. Not surprisingly, some of the super-rich declined to join the Patriotic Millionaires when the Agenda Project reached out to them. At least two airily dismissed the Bush tax cuts for millionaires and above - which will cost well over $700 billion over the coming decade - as small potatoes.

Joe Conason

#7. I don't want to get into the 'who's a hostage-taker' discussion here, but what is the estate tax? It's a double tax on death. Economists will tell you that it's really not a tax that soaks the rich, but it's a tax on capital that deprives business investment and therefore job creation.

Paul Ryan

#8. Rather than squander the surplus on tax breaks for the rich, we should add a prescription drug benefit to the Medicare program, shore up Social Security, fortify our defense, provide a quality public education and offer economic assistance to rural areas.

Bennie Thompson

#9. The American people want to raise the minimum wage. Every poll tells us that. That bill will not get to the floor of the Senate. The American people want to ask the rich to pay more in taxes. But the legislation that will get to the floor is tax breaks for billionaires.

Bernie Sanders

#10. Out of one pocket we pay billions of our tax dollars to support the production of expensive, disease-causing foods. Out of the other pocket, we pay medical bills that are too high because our overweight population consumes too much of these rich, disease-causing foods.

Joel Fuhrman

#11. The tax code is not the only area where the administration is helping the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. It has spent $155 billion for an unnecessary war driven by fear.

Dennis Kucinich

#12. Death is the most convenient time to tax rich people.

David Lloyd George

#13. My brother is a tax guy, and the way I look at it, it's like he's spending his life saving money for rich people. So I think making strangers laugh, at least having a creative component to your profession, is more manageable for me. I can live with that a lot easier.

Gary Gulman

#14. The 'fiscal cliff' is a ruse, an invention by the right and the rich, to try and keep their huge tax breaks.

Michael Moore

#15. My message to David Cameron, as the head of our government, is to seriously think again about this Robin Hood tax, the tax to help the poor by taking a little bit from the rich.

Keith O'Brien

#16. Tax laws favor capital over labor, giving capital gains a lower rate than ordinary income. The rich get humongous mortgage interest deductions while renters get no deduction at all.

Robert Reich

#17. Change of fashion is the tax levied by the industry of the poor on the vanity of the rich.

Nicolas Chamfort

#18. The Government cannot afford to have a country made up entirely of rich people, because rich people pay so little tax that the Government would quickly go bankrupt. This is why Government men always tell us that labor is man's noblest calling. Government needs labor to pay its upkeep.

Russell Baker

#19. 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

#20. Philanthropists today want input into how their monies are being deployed. The big question is, can governments use this insight to sell the rich the idea of paying more tax rather than spend more on charitable giving?

Noreena Hertz

#21. If you're living hand-to-mouth, and still buying into the con that the big threats to America are socialized medicine, Mexican immigrants and tax increases, then you're not being kept down by the rich. You're being kept down by you.

Bill Maher

#22. 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

#23. John Kerry said today that he wants to get rid of tax cuts for the rich and his wife said, 'Hey, shut up! What's the matter with you?! Are you nuts?!'

Jay Leno

#24. Fairness has not been enhanced by the tax code, but lobbyists have been made rich, politicians have been re-elected, and the economy has been made to suffer.

Jim Bridenstine

#25. more tax breaks for the very rich is only one symptom of an economic and political system that is grotesquely failing the average American.

Bernie Sanders

#26. I'm against an income tax because all the rich people hire lawyers and accountants to be sure that they don't pay income tax.

Ann Richards

#27. Well, the taxes that everyone else is paying are supporting lots of programs that were in place prior to Obama's new spending. So new spending has too be paid for by new taxes, or by eliminating existing tax breaks. And Obama wants that burden to be borne exclusively by the rich.

Dinesh D'Souza

#28. Sadly, this is the same old Republican story of Robin Hood in reverse - tax cuts for the rich while programs for average and low income Americans suffer.

Jose Serrano

#29. Britain needs a simpler tax system which is simple to understand, where there are no loop-holes, where the very rich do not avoid tax by employing expensive accountants

George Osborne

#30. The rich have grown richer, but their tax rate has declined. The poor have grown poorer, but their taxes have increased.

Michael Parenti

#31. Trickle down economics is a fraud. Giving tax breaks to the rich and large corporations does not create jobs. It simply makes the rich richer, enlarges the deficit and increases income and wealth inequality. We need economic policies which benefit working families, not the billionaire class.

Bernie Sanders

#32. 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

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

Carol Moseley Braun

#34. The truth is, however rich people get, they hate paying tax. Some live abroad for a year, or years at a time just to avoid it. Bizarre really - desperate economic migrants are driven to leave their homeland because of poverty; tax exiles are driven overseas by their wealth.

Clint Black

#35. The corporate right fires up the religious right against gay marriage and abortion and uses their votes to push their deregulation and tax cuts for the rich. It's an old trick. The House of Saud has the same arrangement with the Mullahs in Saudi Arabia.

Adam McKay

#36. It's a game. We tax lawyers teach the rich how to play it so they can stay rich-and the IRS keeps changing the rules so we can keep getting rich teaching them.

John Grisham

#37. While the poor and middle class fight for us in Afghanistan, and while most Americans struggle to make ends meet, we mega-rich continue to get our extraordinary tax breaks.

Warren Buffett

#38. Rich people are so eccentric, and I don't think people really realize. Especially by the turn of the century, they were living like rappers, and there was no income tax. They are some of the most fascinating people, and I am endlessly fascinated.

Riki Lindhome

#39. Once you realize that trickle-down economics does not work, you will see the excessive tax cuts for the rich as what they are
a simple upward redistribution of income, rather than a way to make all of us richer, as we were told.

Ha-Joon Chang

#40. While President Bush's tax give-aways for the rich are pushing us further into debt, he compensates by increasing the out-of-pocket costs to our veterans.

Tom Harkin

#41. It's the rich who get the biggest tax breaks. It's the best students who get the best teaching and most attention. And

Malcolm Gladwell

#42. 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

#43. Maybe, instead of paying so much in tax, the very rich could be incentivised to help their local community and young people who do not have a home.

Anthea Turner

#44. I assume the president's going to say he got bad intelligence ... I think that wherever you see poverty, whether it's in the white rural community or the black urban community, you see that the resources have been sucked up into the war and tax cuts for the rich.

Charles Rangel

#45. Yes, the rich will find ways to avoid paying more taxes, courtesy of clever accountants and tax attorneys. But this has always been the case, regardless of where the tax rate is set.

Robert Reich

#46. The rich hire lawyers and accountants for a reason - to pass the tax bill on to you.

George W. Bush

#47. This is the national equivalent of having no savings, your credit card maxed out, you didn't renew your insurance, and now your house has burned down. The only way we can start to solve this is rolling back the tax cuts for the rich, which would save about $70 billion.

Diana DeGette

#48. No, I'm not rich. I had a tax problem in this country, curiously enough, and my accountant said the British government was patently wrong in taxing me, and they were, but we couldn't persuade them and it cost me everything I had.

Donald Sutherland

#49. Budget cuts if you're not rich, tax cuts if you are. Less money for those who don't have any and more to those who do. That's how President Fredo says we're going to get out of the giant deficit hole he's dug. You can't put it any more simply. Rich people richer. Poor people poorer.

Will Durst

#50. The rich control our politics to a huge extend. In return they get tax cuts and deregulation. It's been and is an amazing ride for the rich.

Jeffrey D. Sachs

#51. Why do tax havens exist? Because rich countries allow them to. If the U.S. came down on tax havens in the same way they come down on countries that trade with Iran and Cuba, we'd have no tax havens in the world.

Ha-Joon Chang

#52. Taxes are important. President Bush's tax proposals leave no rich person behind. Voters approve of President Bush helping the kind of people they wish they were one of.

Andy Rooney

#53. When you have a tax system in which most of the exemptions and the lowest rates benefit the richest, all in the name of job creation, all that happens is that the rich get richer.

Nick Hanauer