Sheldon Whitehouse Quotes

To deal with entitlements we must either raise taxes, cut benefits, or borrow inordinate amounts of money.

Increased revenues, meaning higher taxes, will be a central element of any successful long-term budget plan, and President Obama is right to insist that the wealthy - the slice of America that has come through the recession in by far the best financial health - should provide those funds.

What the Republicans have said is rather than touch one hair on the heads of the wealthiest people in our country, people who make over $1 million a year, they're saying, 'Seniors should pay $6,000 more dollars a year. But please don't let us ask the wealthiest to do their fair share.'

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.

The good news is that, according to the Obama administration, the rich will pay for everything. The bad news is that, according to the Obama administration, you're rich.

When you say fiscal responsibility, it seems to me that you really mean rich people keeping their money.

The state of our state is fragile …. Our revenue system is broken because it has relied on regressive and unstable taxes …. I refuse to balance this budget on the backs of the children, the elderly, and the poor.

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

When I see the sort of mindless tax cuts for the wealthy, cuts to education, I just think we've got it exactly backward in this country.

We need a budget that will foster economic growth for all of our people, and we need to make taxes more simple and fair for working families - not give handouts to the rich.

The United States has a huge budget deficit so taxes are going to have to go up and I certainly agree they should go up more on the rich than everyone else. That - that's just justice.

The only way America can reduce the long-term budget deficit, maintain vital services, protect Social Security and Medicare, invest more in education and infrastructure, and not raise taxes on the working middle class is by raising taxes on the super rich.

Our platform calls for a balanced deficit reduction plan where the wealthy pay their fair share. And when your country is in a costly war, with our soldiers sacrificing abroad and our nation facing a debt crisis at home, being asked to pay your fair share isn't class warfare - it's patriotism.

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.

If we're not going to tax the rich anymore, we're going to create class warfare.

Bush is giving the rich a tax cut instead of putting that cut in the pockets of working people.

GOP candidates routinely sign a pledge never, ever to raise taxes. Democratic candidates aren't even asked to sign a parallel pledge never, ever to cut entitlements.

The problem is government spends too much. So raising taxes is what politicians do, instead of reducing spending.

There is a legitimate concern about wealth distribution in the United States, but the answer is not to scapegoat any individual who makes over $200,000 per year and to try to sell the fraud that the government can equitably take the money of those who have earned it and give it to those who haven't.

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.

In order to reduce the deficit, there has to be revenue in addition to cuts.

It's not easy cutting welfare bills. It's not easy cutting the deficit.

If you're opposed to the budget I submitted to the General Assembly, you're for a tax increase.

In 1993, as House Democratic Leader, I led the fight to pass the Clinton-Gore economic plan - a plan designed to slash the deficit, invest in education, cut taxes for working families, and ask the wealthy among us to pay their fair share... Not one Republican voted for that plan. They said it was a job killer.

I recognize that Republicans see a moral difference between a dollar taken away from a millionaire in government benefits and a dollar taken away from a millionaire in taxes.