A Quote by Joe Klein

Political courage requires clarity. The Obama Administration chose the tortured route of arguing the legality of the individual mandate via the interstate commerce clause for one simple reason: it did not want to take the political risk of allowing opponents to call it a tax increase. That was stupid. The Republicans were calling it a tax increase anyway.

Joe Klein

Quote Topics

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Quote Author

Joe Klein
American - Journalist
Born: September 7, 1946

Assuming that a tax increase is necessary, it is clearly preferable to impose the additional cost on land by increasing the land tax, rather than to increase the wage tax - the two alternatives open to the City (of Pittsburgh). It is the use and occupancy of property that creates the need for the municipal services that appear as the largest item in the budget - fire and police protection, waste removal, and public works. The average increase in tax bills of city residents will be about twice as great with wage tax increase than with a land tax increase.

Herbert Simon

Many Republicans have what I call a 'tax-cut syndrome' where they have never seen a tax cut they didn't really like and didn't see a tax increase they didn't hate and do everything they could to block.

Peter George Peterson

In 2010 the U.S. will have a payroll tax rate increase, an estate tax increase, and income tax increases. There's also a tax increase coming in 2010 on carried interest. This rate will rise from its current level of 15 percent to 35 percent, and then it will rise again in 2011.

Arthur Laffer

In the middle of a recession no tax increase is justified because it kills jobs, and any tax increase is a job-killing measure and should be defeated.

Newt Gingrich

The president [Barak Obama] had been asked some questions by George Stephanopoulos on a news show about whether it was a tax. And he had given an answer that you might read as him saying it wasn't a tax. I think what he said was, "It isn't a tax increase on all Americans."

Donald Verrilli Jr.

With a congressional mandate to run the deficit up as high as need be, there is no reason to raise taxes now and risk aggravating the depression. Instead, Obama will follow the opposite of the Reagan strategy. Reagan cut taxes and increased the deficit so that liberals could not increase spending. Obama will raise spending and increase the deficit so that conservatives cannot cut taxes. And, when the economy is restored, he will raise taxes with impunity, since the only people who will have to pay them would be rich Republicans.

Dick Morris

The Clinton tax increase - which was an increase in taxes primarily on upper-income people - not only made the tax code more nearly progressive, it preceded one of the most productive economic periods in American life.

Barney Frank

It is easier to start taxes than to stop them. A tax an inch long can easily become a yard long. That has been the history of the income tax. Would not the sales tax be likely to have a similar history [in the U.S.]? ... Canadian newspapers report that an increase in the sales tax threatens to drive the Mackenzie King administration out of office. Canada began with a sales tax of 2%.... Starting this month the tax is 6%. The burden, in other words, has already been increased 200% ... What the U.S. needs is not new taxes, is not more taxes, but fewer and lower taxes.

B. C. Forbes

If you have to change the law to get more money, that's a tax increase, and Americans for Tax Reform supports all efforts of tax reform, getting rid of deductions or credits, or something that's misclassified, as long as you at the same time reduce rates so that it's not a hidden tax.

Grover Norquist

Improved AR roads, via voter-approved tax increase.

Mike Huckabee

The tax code is very inefficient. Both the personal tax code and the corporate tax code. By closing loopholes and lowering rates, you could increase the efficiency of the tax code and create more incentives for people to invest.

Ben Bernanke

There is an old adage that the quickest way to drop your tax take is to increase taxes. If capital gains tax is going to be 50 percent, my contingent capital gains tax is going to be 250 million pounds.

Peter Hargreaves

Legislation to create a new 10 percent tax bracket, reduce the marriage penalty, cut the tax rate on dividends and capital gains, and increase the child tax credit have been essential elements in this economic expansion.

Roger Wicker

It's clear from what we have already learned that the Obama administration freely used our tax dollars for political purposes, including support of the Soros operation.

Tom Fitton

It's the spring of 2012, that the [Barak] Obama administration would be embracing the argument that the Affordable Care Act was a tax, and that was going to, itself, be a political albatross.

Donald Verrilli Jr.

When I do something stupid with money and lose it....I call that Stupid Tax. I have paid so much Stupid Tax that I am expert.