Mr. CANADY of Florida. Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I yield 4 minutes to the gentleman from Texas [Mr. PAUL].
Mr. SPEAKER. The gentleman from Texas is recognized for four minutes.
1997 Ron Paul 17:1
Mr. PAUL.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and thank you for yielding the time.
1997 Ron Paul 17:2
Mr. Speaker, I would like to first compliment the gentleman from Texas [Mr. Barton] for having brought this to the House floor. I think it is a wonderful opportunity for us to discuss a very important issue and also to make a proposal to do some good around here.
1997 Ron Paul 17:3
Limiting taxes happens to be an issue that is dear to my heart and something I want to talk about. I have a philosophy about taxes. One is that taxes really hurt us twice, once when we take the money from the people, then when we go and spend it. So rarely do we spend the money wisely, but the people always seem to be hurt.
1997 Ron Paul 17:4
I have yet in my many years experience in political life had anybody come up to me and say, go to Washington and raise taxes. Everybody feels that they are overtaxed. Anything that we could do to limit taxes I think would be beneficial.
1997 Ron Paul 17:5
Whether or not this amendment will solve all of our problems is another issue. Quite frankly, it is not going to solve all of our problems. We have seen a proposal floating around for several years about balancing the budget. I am not enthusiastic about the balanced budget amendment precisely because that amendment, in itself, does not preclude what this amendment does, and that is raising taxes in order to balance the budget. That would be very, very detrimental.
1997 Ron Paul 17:6
The important issue that we have to deal with is the level of government expenditures. If we have a balanced budget at $2 trillion a year, that is very detrimental. If we have an unbalanced budget at $1 trillion a year, at least the American people would have more of their own money to spend.
1997 Ron Paul 17:7
This is an effort to move in the direction of limiting taxes, and I think this is very, very important. There are a lot of things, though, that are out of our control. For instance, a small tax increase is not going to be included here. If we change the Tax Code and change indexing, taxes will go up, and this will not be included.
1997 Ron Paul 17:8
Another tax that is not talked about much around here, but I consider it a very important tax, and that is the inflation tax. If we in the Congress spend too much, we do not have enough revenues, we can send the bill to the Federal Reserve. The Federal Reserve creates credit, and therefore diluting the value of our money, and the people suffer because their cost of living goes up. So that indeed is a tax.
1997 Ron Paul 17:9
We do not have a whole lot of choices on how we accommodate our spending habits here. First, we can tax people; second, we can borrow; and the other is, we can inflate. All of these are detrimental. The important issue is to limit government spending.
1997 Ron Paul 17:10
We will not solve any of our problems here until we address the serious subject of what should the role of government be. If we continue to believe that the role of government should be to perpetuate a bankrupt welfare state and to police the world and tell people how to live their personal lives, quite frankly, we are not going to get anywhere in solving our problems. We cannot patch this together.
1997 Ron Paul 17:11
Collecting more revenues would be detrimental. Collecting less revenues would put more pressure on us to spend less money. But then again, it is not going to deal with the subject of interest rates.
1997 Ron Paul 17:12
What happens if this year the interest rates go up 1 percent? Which they may, because interest rates are rising once again. And if interest rates go up 1 percent, it adds $50 billion to our interest payment on our national debt. That is out of our direct control here in the House or in the Senate. We cannot take care of that just by passing another law or raising taxes.
1997 Ron Paul 17:13
Also, we do not have control of the business cycle. We should have much better control, because we understand and should understand the business cycle and we should prevent the downturns. But sure enough, there will be another recession, entitlement payments will automatically go up, put more pressure on us with the deficit, and also put more pressure on those who would like to say, well, if the spending is going up, we have to take care of the people, and what we need to do is raise taxes. The easier, the better. A very, very dangerous situation when it is easy to raise taxes. The Founders of this country in no way intended that taxes on income should ever occur, let alone be done easily.
1997 Ron Paul 17:14
So this is a small effort in the right direction. I ask for a yea vote on this amendment.
Notes:
1997 Ron Paul 17:1
Ron Paul says, Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and thank you for yielding the time. and Congressional Record misquotes him as saying, Mr. Speaker, I thank the gentleman for yielding me this time. See the C-Span video, at 17:45:03 local time.
1997 Ron Paul 17:2 Congressional Record adds Mr. Speaker, to the start of this verse. See the C-Span video, at 17:45:08 local time.
Ron Paul says, [Mr. Barton] from Texas, and Congressional Record misquotes him as saying, from Texas [Mr. Barton].
