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MAJORITY LEADER TOM DELAY, REPRESENTATIVES LINDER, BRADY, AND CULBERSON CALL FOR FUNDAMENTAL TAX REFORM
April 15, 2004
Today, as taxpayers around the country rush to the post office to file their taxes, Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Sugarland) and Representatives John Linder (R-Georgia), Kevin Brady (R-The Woodlands), and John Culberson (R-Houston) called on Congress to pass much needed fundamental tax reform legislation. They discussed the FairTax plan at a press conference held at a post office in downtown Houston, Texas.
“Under Linder's national sales tax, we can free the national economy from the strangle-hold of the IRS, and unleash a new era of American growth, job creation, and competitiveness, with a chance to double the economy in the next 10 to 15 years,” said Majority Leader Tom DeLay.
The FairTax (H.R. 25) is a bipartisan proposal that would shift the federal government’s method of funding operations from income-based taxes to a personal consumption tax. It would repeal all federal personal income taxes, corporate income taxes, payroll taxes, self-employment taxes, capital gains taxes, and gift and estate taxes and replace these taxes with a revenue-neutral 23 percent sales tax on all retail sales of new goods and services.
“April 15th has become a day that Americans have come to dread,” Linder said. “The FairTax is the right thing to do to generate economic growth and help create new jobs. I have been the primary sponsor of the FairTax since 1999 and thanks to the leadership and support of Majority Leader DeLay and Representatives Brady and Culberson, we are closer to making April 15th just another day.”
“America's tax code is too burdensome and penalizes Americans for living the American dream: going to school to get a skill, working hard, saving for retirement, starting a business, getting married, and working a lifetime to build a business to pass down to children,” said Representative Brady. “The FairTax supports the values that make America stronger and better. The biggest obstacle to the FairTax is that people simply don’t believe Congress would ever do it. If America’s grassroots will speak out, Congress will listen and act.”
"We should do to the IRS, what Rome did to Carthage…tear it down stone by stone and throw salt in the furrows,” said Representative Culberson.
The FairTax has more co-sponsorship in the House of Representatives than any other fundamental tax relief legislation in Congress. And, for the first time ever, the FairTax has been introduced in the Senate as S. 1493 by Senator Saxby Chambliss (R-Georgia) and cosponsored by Senator Zell Miller (D-Georgia).
“The FairTax is the answer to the deficit, the entitlement crisis, and our need for more and better jobs in the global economy,” DeLay said. ###
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