Tax Fairness and Tax Equity
Floor Speech
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Mrs. BLACKBURN. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the recognition and the opportunity to revise and extend my remarks and to address the body of the House.
Mr. Speaker, as my colleagues all know, this is the week that the American people will strike that check to the Internal Revenue Service to pay their taxes. Now, what has ended up happening through the years, as this tax that came on our books about 100 years ago and was to be a 1 percent temporary tax, has grown and grown and grown, and it continues to eat a greater share of our incomes.
I hear from constituents every single day--every single day--about the unfairness and the overreach of the IRS. They are so fed up with this because what they observe is government continues to grow and the bureaucracy continues to grow, and what happens? It just takes away bits and pieces of our freedom every time that bureaucracy expands.
That is the reason that this week we in the House have set aside time to make certain that we are addressing those concerns that we hear from our constituents. This is a week where we are going to talk about tax fairness, tax equity, and also about overreach, which comes from a government that refuses to live within its means and continues to take more out of the pockets of hard-working taxpayers who are fighting and working so hard to live within their means. I think there basically is something immoral about taxpayers working so hard to live within their means and sending money to a government that refuses to live within its means.
Now, there are some things that we can do to address this issue and things that we ought to be doing, and we are. One is to look at a permanent repeal of the death tax. I am so pleased that Chairman Ryan and Chairman Brady are bringing these bills forward.
The other that I want to talk specifically about for a few minutes is H.R. 622. This is a bill that I am the lead cosponsor on with Congressman Kevin Brady and one that is very important to my State of Tennessee, just as it is to the other States--Texas, Florida, Washington State, Nevada--that don't have a State income tax but that choose to fund their government off of other taxes, sales tax. What this legislation does is to make permanent the ability of citizens, taxpayers in those States to deduct their sales tax, their State and local sales tax from their Federal income tax filing.
Now, this is an issue Congressman Brady and I have been working on since 2003, and that year we were successful in having the ability to deduct that sales tax restored to your State income tax, your Federal income tax
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filing. That is why you now have lines 5a and 5b on those forms.
This is the reason that I became so interested in this issue. When I was a State senator in Tennessee, I led not a 4-day or 4-week or 4-month, but a 4-year battle against implementation of a State income tax in my State--4 full years. It was quite a fight. The people of the State of Tennessee worked with me to make certain that we would remain State income tax-free.
Now, of course, they wanted that State income tax to pay for a health care plan. It had been the test case for HillaryCare. It was known as TennCare. That program of government-run health care exceeded the expectations of its budget by not 100 percent; it quadrupled in cost over a 5-year period of time. So Tennesseeans learned in 2000, 2001, and 2002 the message and the lesson of what a State income tax would do, how it would take more money out of their pocket.
As I came to Congress in 2003, one of the very first things we did was to put attention on restoring this deductibility. It is an important bill. I congratulate Congressman Brady, Chairman Brady for his work on it. I thank him for his partnership on the issue. I encourage my colleagues to vote for H.R. 622.
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