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Show Taxpayers have a right to limit taxation The Nation's Capital has emerged from the "wet" season into the hot, humid time of year when, in years past, Congress and a large part of the city packed up and left for the summer. But not any longer. Thanks to air-conditioning, air-conditioning, the Senate and House of Representatives, following the July Fourth recess, are at work on details of the $770 billion budget for fiscal 1983. It is perhaps the most important activity of the year. It is the time when Congress and its spending and tax committees redistribute the revenues collected by the U.S. Treasury. This huge income-transfer process is evidenced by a study of taxes paid by different income groups, which is made yearly by a nonprofit Washington research organization, the Tax Foundation. Founda-tion. In 1980, just nine million U.S. taxpayers tax-payers in the upper 10 percent bracket paid more than half of all federal income in-come taxes. In contrast, taxpayers in the lowest 10 percent income bracket paid less than one percent. Put another way, the taxpayer in the upper 10 percent bracket (those earning earn-ing $34,100 or more a year) paid an average tax of $13,748. The average taxpayer tax-payer paid $2,653. How is the money spent, or redistributed? Largely through a vast array of social programs which benefit millions of Americans, ranging from war veterans and retired federal workers to Social Security recipients, welfare families, dairy farmers and the like. Despite charges of some lawmakers that the 1982 budget cuts these programs pro-grams "to the bone" a Senator declared, for example, that "every pro- vision of this budget resolution will add more to the rich and take from the poor" despite such outbursts, these programs continue to grow rapidly in costs and number of recipients. Senate Budget Chairman Pete V. Domenici (R-N.M.) cited data showing these outlays for major benefit programs: 1976 $153.2 billion, 1981 $295.9 billion and 1985 $419.2 billion projected. Whatever Americans may think of the big income-transfer system, it is clear they have little control over it. According Ac-cording to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Com-merce, a perennial budget watchdog, the absence of adequate spending control con-trol is largely the cause of massive ; federal budget deficits-20 of them in the last 21 years. The Chamber currently is in the forefront of efforts in Congress to win adoption of a balanced budgettax limitation amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Con-stitution. The amendment is needed, according to Chamber President Richard L. Lesher, because the budget now is buffeted "on both sides of the ledger." Both spending and tax revenues are out of control. On the other hand, inflation infla-tion and bracket creep, which push peo-ple peo-ple into higher tax brackets, automatically drive up tax revenues. On the other, automatic cost-of-living adjustments are driving the cost of federal benefit programs out of sight. The proposed balanced budgettax limitation amendment would hold the yearly increase in tax revenues to the same percentage increase in national income the year before. At long last, it would place a limitation on how much of national income the government may collect and redistribute. Tragically, there is no such limitation today. |