After military service, the most patriotic thing you can do as a wealthy person is pay your taxes.
The skills and productivity of American Workers, not to mention the taxes they pay, are the greatest economic resource our country has. To condemn large numbers of them to unemployment, to deprive the Treasury of their tax contributions and to force them to live on unemployment at public expense is the most expensive luxury any society ever chose to buy.
I would say that the money that was invested in me by Warwickshire Education Authority, which they did for five years, has been repaid a hundred times over. I have paid a lot more back to them in tax than they paid in support to me, but they helped me on my way - they launched me; they got me going.
Social Security is an insurance policy. It's a terrible investment vehicle. Social Security has some great benefits. But it was never meant to be a savings plan. So we need to have a national debate. Should this 12.5 percent that we're contributing all go into a Social Security pool, or should half go into a mandatory savings plan?
We have undocumented immigrants in America who are paying more federal income tax than a billionaire. I find that just astonishing.
Understand, this is unemployment insurance. It's not welfare, as a lot of my Republican colleagues like to suggest it is. You pay into it when you're working. You get help when you're not.
There are going to be stories of very young kids that were brought to this country at a very young age who don't even speak Spanish that are going to be sent back to Nicaragua or some other place. And it's gonna feel weird and I understand that. The goal here is to have an immigration policy that works. And if you provide a path for people to enter this country illegally and if they stay here long enough and pay enough in taxes, well let them stay legally...why would anyone come in through the legal process?
Let me respond with a few points, the first being that all immigrants pay taxes, income taxes, property taxes, sales taxes, gasoline taxes, cigarette taxes, every tax when they make a purchase.
There was a council house waiting for me when I had Ryan, there was a welfare state. I never put into the system before I took out, I was on income support before I'd even paid a penny of tax.
It is only fair to expect public employees like me and others in the public sector to pay something close to what our neighbors and our fellow citizens do in the private sector.
Social Security may be the most beloved of all the government's programs, partly because it requires so little thinking. You pay taxes while you work, then you and your spouse collect until you die.
I don't think the folks in the low-tax states really want to go into a fairness discussion. Residents of Connecticut and New York would love to remind them how much they pay in federal taxes to support programs for Mississippi and South Dakota.
The money that goes into Social Security is not the government's money. it's your money. You paid for it.
All of us who serve in the House of Representatives and the Senate pay into Social Security.
As far as income tax payments go, sources vary in their accounts, but a range of studies find that immigrants pay between $90 billion and $140 billion in Federal, State, and local taxes.
