Tip O'Neill Quotes

Trickle down economics is a fraud. Giving tax breaks to the rich and large corporations does not create jobs. It simply makes the rich richer, enlarges the deficit and increases income and wealth inequality. We need economic policies which benefit working families, not the billionaire class.

You know and I know and economists know that trickle-down economics doesn't work.

The tax relief that this Congress has given now in terms of four tax cuts has overwhelmingly gone to the people at the very top of the income scale in America.

I just think that - when a country needs more income and we do, we're only taking in 15 percent of GDP, I mean, that - that - when a country needs more income, they should get it from the people that have it.

... a tax break for the wealthy paid for by the middle class.

Our tax system rewards wealth more than it does work.

Trickle-down economics does not work, and tax reform should not be defined as partisan tax cuts for the wealthy and huge corporations.

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.

If you're really concerned about deficits, you cannot take seriously a budget that would give $30 billion a year worth of tax cuts to not just the top 1 percent but the top 0.1 percent.

We simply cannot afford to give the reigns of government so someone who will double down on trickle down

When people ask, "Why should the rich pay a larger percent of their income than middle-income people?" - my answer is not an answer most people get: It's because their power developed from laws that enriched them.

The kind of plan that Donald [Tramp] has put forth would be trickle-down economics all over again. In fact, it would be the most extreme version, the biggest tax cuts for the top percent of the people in this country than we've ever had.

Voters did say 'repeal health care', they did say 'reduce the size of government.' But not a single one of them from the tea party or anywhere said 'give tax breaks to the wealthiest.'

When you have a tax system in which most of the exemptions and the lowest rates benefit the richest, all in the name of job creation, all that happens is that the rich get richer.

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.

Congress had the opportunity to extend tax relief to working families without increasing the deficit. Instead, we were handed a bill that favors the wealthy and eliminates deductions that benefit the middle class.

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

Sometime, while I wasn't paying attention, trickle-down economics got respectable.

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.

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

Bush already gave obscene tax breaks to people like me and Warren Buffet, and we are saying it's not fair.

Tax laws favor capital over labor, giving capital gains a lower rate than ordinary income. The rich get humongous mortgage interest deductions while renters get no deduction at all.

Even tax breaks that are supposed to help the middle class too often skew toward the wealthy. Consider the mortgage interest deduction. While political leaders in both parties have long considered it untouchable, it actually helps those at the top of the income scale far more than those at the bottom.

So when the only domestic social policy is tax cuts that mostly benefit the wealthiest Americans, we say, 'Where is faith being put into action here?'

The 55% of American households that make less than $40,000 will get a tax break of only $7 while the households that make more than $1 million will receive an average tax break of $32,000.