Issue Position: Budget and Taxation

Issue Position

Congress must balance its budget! It should do so by reducing expenditures - not by raising taxes.

Taxation should supply the U.S. government with money to provide for defense from foreign enemies and for the operation of the executive, legislative and judicial branches of the government.

Congress, however, spends vast amounts of money for things that are not Constitutionally required or even permitted. The result is crushing taxation that stifles the productivity of our people.

Heavy taxation takes resources away from private individuals and businesses, slows economic activity, destroys jobs and raises prices for goods and services. While some advocate so-called "progressive" taxation of the "rich" and not of the "poor" or "middle" classes, these taxes actually have an opposite, regressive effect.

Increased taxation of fuel and electricity, as advocated by Mr. DeFazio, causes the prices of the essential items to rise. These price increases are more harmful to those with lower incomes because their fewer dollars are much more precious to them. In personal real cost, taxation of the productive "rich" is a regressive policy that hurts most the people whom its advocates claim to help.

A tax on private enterprise is actually a tax on all those who use the products of that enterprise. Taxes fall most heavily on those who have lower incomes and can least afford more expensive products.

Excessive taxation takes resources away from the private sector where they are earned and gives them to politicians and bureaucrats who squander money with reckless abandon, while our entire country becomes poorer - with fewer jobs and reduced prosperity.

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