OCR Text |
Show 9 I ! " The Senator Reports To The People Senator Arthur V. Watkim : ' , " .1: One of the most difficult tasks a Congressman lias is that of voting to increase taxes. Increases in taxes affect me just as much as everyone else. My wish is that we were reducing taxes. The Senate Finance Committee is now writing its version of the House-approved. 19.)1 tax bill. It appears that the tax increase will not now become effective until Xov, and that taxes will not be withheld until that date. I am concerned over a philosophy which has obtained ob-tained widespread belief in the country over the past 20 years, 'This is the belief that "the rich" can pay the bill. Certain people continue to encourage that philosophy philoso-phy and they continue to encourage class feeling by constant con-stant criticism of what they call "the special privileged.'' I agree, however, that taxes should be made applicable as far as possible on the ability to pay. People do not like to read figures, and I realize that figures fig-ures often can be used to tell any side of a story. I should like, however, to summarize the present tax picture, using U S Treasury figures: The low income group representing rep-resenting over 42 millions people peo-ple or 96.2 per cent of all indi vidual income tax payers, con-j con-j tribute over 13 billion dollars ' annually in taxes. The upper income group, earning more than $10,000 (3.8 per cent of all taxpayers), contributes over 10 billion dollars in taxes. An i other major tax source is cor porate income, which contrib utes more than 22 billion dollars dol-lars annually to pay the cost of government. The remainder of the federal income accrues from various forms of excise taxes. Since taxes of all kinds are now taking approximately 30 of our national income, it can readily be seen that the nation is fast reaching the point of no return. The low Income group cann' stand many more tax increases. While additional taxes will be imposed on all groups in the new tax bill, it is recognized form of excise levies of various sorts. Taxes 'alone will not stop inflation. in-flation. The government is going to have to cut expenditures. expendi-tures. I hope the Congress will make some big reductions all along the line and this includes cuts in the defense budget. 1 don't want essential defense items cut, but I believe economies econ-omies can be effected and that non-essentials can be reduced sufficiently to save the American Amer-ican taxpayers billions of dollars dol-lars in defense appropriations alone. I voted for many reductions reduc-tions in the appropriation bills thus far considered by the Senate. Sen-ate. I intend to vote for further fur-ther reductions as the appropriation appropri-ation bills are considered by the Senate. The danger in the whole argument argu-ment about who shall pay taxes and in what amount is that we may reach a point where we will destroy our system of free enterprise. In Britain today, with a 40 tax load, daily workers find it undesirable to work overtime because taxes deprive them of their extra earnings. Likewise with business, ' indi- viduals will have no incentive left to enter business if taxes are going to deprive them of all gain. And most vicious of all is the fact that taxation by government govern-ment can lead to Socialism. The citizen, because of taxes, cannot provide' for himself, so he expects ex-pects the government to do it for him. ( that if those in the upper income I brackets were to have all of their untaxed income after the usual exemptions taken from 1 them, the 20 billion dollars would pay less than 13 of the total budget request by Presi-( dent Truman for 1952. Corporation taxes, which al.sn will be inrred. could not meet the cost of government even if the government took all of their untaxed income which also amounts to slightly more than 20 billion dollars. Let's look at the Federal Bud get: President Truman asked for over 71 billion dollars for the 1952 fiscal year. But he is requesting new obligational authority amounting to over 94 billion dollars for the same period. per-iod. This eventually must be paid, along with the present 257 billion national debt. Individual income tax payers now pay the government almost 24 billion dollars a year in taxes. In- addition, they pay another 8 billion in taxes in the |