Barack Obama Quotes

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

I think most people... would be glad to pay the same taxes they paid when Bill Clinton was president, if only they could have the same economy they had when Bill Clinton was president.

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.

Our true test is not between tax reduction on the one hand and the avoidance of Federal deficits on the other. It is increasingly clear that no matter what party is in power, so long as our national security needs keep rising, an economy hampered by restrictive tax rates will never produce enough revenues to balance our budget—just as it never will produce enough jobs or enough profits.

I do think there is room at the very top for marginal tax changes.

The only question where there is disagreement is should the highest income rates above a quarter million dollars a year go back to where they were under Bill Clinton. That is the dispute about the taxes.

I think we need to have competitive tax rates in order to create jobs in this country. And I think it should be fair.

I want to reform the tax code so that it's simple, fair, and asks the wealthiest households to pay higher taxes on incomes over $250,000 - the same rate we had when Bill Clinton was president; the same rate we had when our economy created nearly 23 million new jobs, the biggest surplus in history, and a lot of millionaires to boot.

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.

The centerpiece of Obamanomics - raising taxes on high earners and investors and lowering them on the middle class - is attacked by free-marketers for penalizing economic success and possibly further stalling economic growth.

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.

Simply cutting the taxes for America's wealthiest families is clearly not creating the needed new jobs, and that strategy is unlikely to succeed in the future.

I believe that Bill Clinton's second term will be good for business... my business!

If you're going to go increase taxes on small businesses, you're going to slow down the extent to which we're able to reduce unemployment. So I think it's a serious mistake; the wrong time to raise taxes.

All those predictions about how much economic growth will be created by this, all of those new jobs, would be created by the things we wanted - the extension of unemployment insurance and middle class tax cuts. An estate tax for millionaires adds exactly zero jobs. A tax cut for billionaires - virtually none.

If we had zero corporate tax in this country, tens of millions of jobs would get created in this country for no other reason.

If Republicans are correct that lower rates spur economic growth, then lower rates on all income - made possible in part by raising capital-gains rates - should bolster economic growth across the economy.

Successful businesses create jobs; that is true. But the notion that if we cut taxes enough for the very rich and for already hugely profitable businesses, then all that money will trickle down to everyone else in the form of job creation is simply false.

My biggest worry is that Obama says he's going to tax the upper 5 percent by raising their taxes by 20 percent. But among that 5 percent are the corporations that are hiring middle-class Americans.

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.

Republicans seem to be gambling that most Americans won't care about a few rich private equity managers if their own taxes go down, their stock portfolio goes up, and economic growth accelerates.

What hinders the middle class the most is taxes, and what hinders business from creating jobs and moving people into the middle class are regulations.

An economy hampered by restrictive tax rates will never produce enough jobs or enough profits

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