The reason educational spending in Texas is so low is because you don't have a state tax there, and that's why Texas is big growth because you don't tax people to death.
Look, I still think Texas is a - is a red state. It's going to continue to be a red state. I think as people stay more time in Texas, they become red. They see what, you know, Texas, kind of low tax, you know, a pro-business economy is doing for them as well. It's a well-run state.
Texas has no income tax, which is a big draw for corporate executives who do business there. But it's hardly tax-free. The property taxes are high for a Southern state. The sales taxes are high. One study found that the bottom 20 percent of the Texas population pays 12 percent of its income in state and local taxes.
I had nothing to do with death panels. I thought it was a horrible phrase about end of life. I didn't think it was accurate, and I was - I've always been opposed to it. The reason why I stood behind that phrase "death tax" for so many years is because the only time that you could pay that tax, the only time, is on the death of a relative. And that's what makes it a death tax. You have to be accurate.
The bottom line is that the death tax is a tax on the economy because it slows economic growth.
Tax increases slow economic growth. Why would you raise taxes? We need to reform spending, the tens of trillions of unfunded liabilities can never be funded by tax increases, that can only be fixed by reducing spending.
The reason we've been growing at 1.8 percent for the last eight, ten years, which is way below the historical average, is in large part because of our tax code. It is important to us to get the biggest, broadest tax reduction, tax cuts, tax reform that we can possibly get because it's the only way we get back to 3 percent growth. That's what's driving all of this, how do you get the American economy back on that historical growth rate of 3 percent and out of these doldrums of 1.8, 1.9 that we had of the previous Barack Obama administration?
As far as value is concerned, the principal reason that I moved to Texas from New Jersey many, many years ago was because I recognized that Texas was a much more entrepreneurial state than New Jersey, that the opportunities to start things were greater in Texas. And my vision was fortunately fulfilled.
God forbid that the United Kingdom should take a lead and introduce a sensible tax system of its own which would probably comprise a very low level of corporation tax - tax on corporate profits - and perhaps a low level of corporate sales tax, because sales are where they are, and sales in this country are sales here, which we can tax here.
In my district back in Texas, significant because we have a big solar panel production plant in Keller, Texas, we have a wind turbine plant in Gainesville, Texas, up in Cook Country.
The Texas thing is such a big deal because whenever I see Texas in a TV show, they always show slow-moving cattle and cowboys with the hats. I wanted to show that Texas isn't a stereotype.
A lot of my family is from Texas, stuff like that, so I was always in Texas, and when you grow up in Texas, around Texas, you want to go to the biggest Texas school, and UT was that.
Texas history is a varied, tempestuous, and vast as the state itself. Texas yesterday is unbelievable, but no more incredible than Texas today. Today's Texas is exhilarating, exasperating, violent, charming, horrible, delightful, alive.
Texas is a state of mind. Texas is an obsession. Above all else, Texas is a nation in every sense of the word.
Local tax increases can cause high-net-worth individuals to move, tax experts said; tax avoidance and tax arbitrage are multitrillion-dollar affairs, and rich people are sensitive to tax rates. But many of the people who move when their home state raises taxes are close to retirement anyway.
The Left despises Texas, with its stellar record of job growth; Texas, with its strong support for traditional marriage and the sanctity of life; Texas, the root of the conservative tree. Should the Left succeed in its attempt to turn Texas purple, America could turn permanently blue.
I took office as president in January 2003, and in April 2003, I sent to Congress my first proposal for tax reform. Some parts were voted on, with respect to federal taxes, and then it came to a standstill. Why? Because each state is interested in its own tax reform, has its own tax policy, and each state has its federal deputies and senators.