James B. Stewart Quotes

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.

I have continuously said that, at the very minimum, the Bush tax cuts for income under $250,000 should be extended.

Cutting taxes for very high income people an average of more than $100,000 a year for people that make more than a million dollars a year is not an effective way to get the economy going.

Tax rates should never be raised in some brackets without being raised in all brackets.

As a matter of policy, increasing taxes on the most economically productive group, which already generates 60 percent of the nation's federal revenues, during a sustained period of economic doldrums is a wretched idea.

There certainly is a case to be made that taxes should be more progressive.

The real reason to oppose increasing tax rates on the wealthy is that it's a good bet they could do more to help the economy if they keep their money rather than have their earnings confiscated by the government and spent on another round of stimulus.

There were no jobs created in America from 1945, when the war ended, through 2003. How could there be? Taxes were too high. Preposterously so under Eisenhower, Kennedy, Nixon, Reagan (who left office with a 28 percent rate on long-term capital gains) and Bush the Elder.

I can't imagine an argument that says that raising marginal tax rates on high income people, many of whom are business owners, is a recipe for economic growth.

When you tax capital gains income, you don't help the economy, you hurt the economy, which is why President Kennedy, President Reagan, President Clinton and President Bush all believed we should have a lower rate for capital gains.

With the Clinton higher tax rates for the top two brackets, we had the longest and strongest economic expansion in U. S. history.

Those who claim the economy will collapse if tax rates on the wealthy increase, do not know their history. In the Eisenhower Administration—and Eisenhower was hardly a left winger—the marginal tax rate was 91 percent. I am only suggesting that it go to 50 percent.

The most equitable way to substantially reduce the deficit is to delay reductions in the top tax bracket for upper-income taxpayers.

Over the past 65 years changes in the top tax rate do not appear correlated with economic growth.

If we want to jack up the tax rates on the really rich, the amounts of money that would bring in are trivial compared to jacking up rates on the middle class.

We need to lower marginal tax rates and increase investment.

There are a few things that we can do. One of them is that we can increase the taxes that people are paying who are the extremely wealthy in our communities. So, 70 percent, 80 percent, we've had it as high as 90 percent.

Income earned by the sweat of your brow should be taxed at the lowest rates, not the highest. Capital gains should be taxed at a higher rate.

Democrats single out glaring examples of tax preferences or spending priorities that favor the wealthy and Republicans cry 'class warfare!'

The U.S. is the country that invented progressive taxation of income and of inherited wealth in the 1910s and '20s.

Having won re-election convincingly and against the economic odds, President Obama quickly made good on his promise of maintaining taxes as they are for the middle class while raising them on the wealthiest Americans.

What we've been hearing over and over again is that the reason Republicans are opposed to the surtax is because of the concern of its impact on job creation. Well, if you carve out employers, you take away that argument.

If anything, taxes for the lower and middle class and maybe even the upper middle class should even probably be cut further. But I think that people at the high end - people like myself - should be paying a lot more in taxes. We have it better than we've ever had it.

You don't need to raise taxes on rich people, because they create capitalization and investment. But you need to tax speculation - meaning capital gains.

Well, the taxes that everyone else is paying are supporting lots of programs that were in place prior to Obama's new spending. So new spending has too be paid for by new taxes, or by eliminating existing tax breaks. And Obama wants that burden to be borne exclusively by the rich.