Ron Paul Quotes.com 2003 Ron Paul Chapter 78 Ron Paul Quotes.com: Legislation To Prohibit The Federal Government From Imposing A “Carry Tax” 17 July 2003 Home Page   Contents Congressional Record   Cached Not linked on Ron Paul’s Congressional website.

Legislation To Prohibit The Federal Government From Imposing A “Carry Tax” 17 July 2003 HON. RON PAUL OF TEXAS IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES Thursday, July 17, 2003 2003 Ron Paul 78:1 Mr. PAUL. Mr. Speaker, I rise to protect American liberty, privacy and economic wellbeing by introducing legislation to prohibit the Federal Government from imposing a “carry tax.” A carry tax is a tax imposed on Americans that requires them to pay a tax whenever they make a bank deposit. The amount of the tax is based on how long their money has been in circulation. Hard as it may be to believe, some in the Federal Government have actually considered imposing this tax on American citizens. Since this bill punishes those who rely on cash for the majority of their economic transactions, and since lower income Americans tend to rely on cash for their economic transactions, this is a highly regressive tax plan. Furthermore, since the plan is designed to lower interest rates, it will negatively impact those who rely on investment income for a significant part of their income. Thus, the carry tax will lower the income of millions of senior citizens. 2003 Ron Paul 78:2 Proposals to punish people if their economic behavior meets with the disapproval of government officials form the foundation of the type of central planning which caused so much misery in the last century. The carry tax proposal is obviously incompatible with a free market. This proposal is also a major threat to personal and financial privacy and thus individual liberty. In order to enforce the carry tax, the government would need a means of monitoring how long each piece of currency has been in circulation and how many hands it passed through before coming into the possession of the person on whom the tax is assessed. Thus, enforcing this tax would also give the government the power to monitor the transactions of individual Americans. The Federal Government should not abuse the authority granted it by our current monetary system and legal tender laws as a backdoor means of prying into the private economic transactions of American citizens. That is why my legislation also forbids the Federal Government from placing any information storage capacity on any Federal Reserve notes. 2003 Ron Paul 78:3 The carry tax was proposed as a measure to counteract the perceived risk of deflation. Yet, the problems this carry tax is intended to solve are caused by our government’s boomand- bust monetary policy. Any perceived deflation in the American economy is the result of the end of the inflationary period of the nineties that created the stock market bubble. When the bubble burst, there was the inevitable process of liquidating bad investments caused by the misallocation of credit as a result of the Federal Reserve monetary policy. In fact, this liquidation is necessary for the economy to recover from the economic misallocations caused by the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy. 2003 Ron Paul 78:4 Unfortunately, rather than finally putting an end to the boom-and-bust cycle, most in Washington are preparing to resume the cycle by calling on the Federal Reserve and the Treasury to flood the economy with new money. If Congress is not going to stabilize the American economy by reforming our unstable monetary policy, it should at least refrain from using this government failure as an excuse to further restrict the American people’s liberty through an odious carry tax. I therefore hope my colleagues will join me in supporting this legislation.

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