Terry Savage Quotes

As a matter of policy, increasing taxes on the most economically productive group, which already generates 60 percent of the nation's federal revenues, during a sustained period of economic doldrums is a wretched idea.

It was an absurd theory that by cutting taxes you would increase government revenues, because the growth of the economy would create an overflow of taxes that would fall into the government coffers.

Cutting taxes for very high income people an average of more than $100,000 a year for people that make more than a million dollars a year is not an effective way to get the economy going.

It's a lethal thing to suddenly raise taxes.

The cardinal rule of taxation is that whatever you put a levy on, you'll inevitably get less of. Taxing corporate activity means less investing, less hiring, fewer jobs and a smaller economy, which hurts the rich, the poor and the middle class alike.

All those predictions about how much economic growth will be created by this, all of those new jobs, would be created by the things we wanted - the extension of unemployment insurance and middle class tax cuts. An estate tax for millionaires adds exactly zero jobs. A tax cut for billionaires - virtually none.

When a liberal says they are going to soak the rich, the middle class will get drenched.

You Republicans say that you are for tax cuts. Let’s see if you will fight for middle class tax cuts as hard as you fight for tax cuts for the oil companies and the rich. Show us what you’ve got!!!

If we want to jack up the tax rates on the really rich, the amounts of money that would bring in are trivial compared to jacking up rates on the middle class.

Demanding that the rich get a tax cut as a condition for tax relief for others is simply elitist.

The reformocons court right-wing censure simply by acknowledging that the middle class is under pressure and that government has a role to play beyond cutting taxes.

If Republicans are correct that lower rates spur economic growth, then lower rates on all income - made possible in part by raising capital-gains rates - should bolster economic growth across the economy.

At the end of the day, Republican-driven tax reform is not only going to be good for the economy and for growth. It's going to be good for middle-class Americans.

Successful businesses create jobs; that is true. But the notion that if we cut taxes enough for the very rich and for already hugely profitable businesses, then all that money will trickle down to everyone else in the form of job creation is simply false.

Advocates of a tax overhaul often point to the 1986 act as a model for a comprehensive approach that ushered in a long period of economic growth.

Sometimes, tax rate increases create the very problems that the spending is intended to cure. In other words, the tax rate increases reduce economic growth; they shrink the pie; they cause more poverty, more despair, more unemployment, which are all things government is trying to alleviate with spending.

Over the past 100 years, there have been three major periods of tax-rate cuts in the U.S.: the Harding-Coolidge cuts of the mid-1920s; the Kennedy cuts of the mid-1960s; and the Reagan cuts of the early 1980s. Each of these periods of tax cuts was remarkably successful as measured by virtually any public policy metric.

Every time we've had a pro-growth fundamental tax reform, be it under President Reagan, President Kennedy - you can even go all the way back to President Coolidge - we have seen paychecks increase, economic growth be ignited, and, actually, more revenues come into the government.

Our argument is everybody ought to be paying lower rates, and we ought to be focused on growing the economy and rebuilding the middle class.

Nothing says 'economic growth' like fundamental tax reform.

The Laffer Curve, by the way, was not invented by me.

Kennedy had already, in 1962, lowered investment taxes on business. And after his tragic assassination, his broader tax proposals were passed into law in early 1964. And they worked. The U.S. economy grew by roughly 5 percent yearly for nearly eight years.

There's nothing wrong with paying taxes; they should be paid in proportion to how rich you are. This idea that you're going to get better growth by cutting taxes at the top has no historical justification. And it's certainly not an argument in favor of capitalism.

The linkage between tax rates and public services is, if not non-existent, negative.

The 'progressive' tax-and-spend agenda has been put on trial. The policies not only lead to much slower growth but also benefit the rich and politically well-connected at the expense of everyone else.