Quotes About Policy

The big gorilla of homeowner tax breaks is the deduction for mortgage interest, which reduces income tax revenues by about $100 billion each year. That is, this one tax deduction costs more than the budgets of the departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Energy, the Interior, and the Treasury combined.

Only the richest smidgen of the population had to file a return, and even for them the top tax rate was just 7%.

The notion that government has to create a mechanism to provide medical care for all who are sick was born in the late 19th century in the very heart of Europe, in a newly created nation called German. - pg 55

In the 1960s, the corporate tax brought in about 33% of U.S. tax revenues. Today, the same tax provides less than 9% of revenues; that means individual taxpayers have to take up the slack and pay more.

The income tax burden, he says, should fall more heavily on those who make their money on financial dealing; he says the U.S. system, in which the tax on capital gains is much lower than the tax on wages and salaries, is simply upside-down and thus counterproductive for dealing with the growth of inequality.

If this 80% top marginal rate were applied to earnings over $500,000, Piketty says, the tax regime would help to even out inequality without stunting economic growth. Beyond the income

It's classic: Congress decides to reduce the complexity of our tax code by making it even more complex.

What had been the Internal Revenue Code of 1954 became the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, which it still is today.

Seven presidents before him - Democrats and Republicans - tried to expand health care to all Americans. President Obama got it done.

Trump's ambitions and motivations notwithstanding, his legacy in the Middle East might best be characterized as tactical maneuvers and strategic incoherence. 3 Trump's actions and tweets left the Middle East in worse shape than what he had inherited, as his policy unorthodoxy created a great deal of uncertainty.

By the time Trump left office, more than 5,500 children had been separated from their parents and 628 children still had not been reunited with their families.

References to everybody just disturb me, and it also disturbs me that the people who make policy are not the same people who live policy. When we talk about everybody, we are leaving a whole lot of bodies out.

When public policy is directed toward urban spaces, it is directed toward people who sit at the margins.

This the United States will never do; and let me point out that we never had any of this hysterical fear of any nation until atomic weapons appeared upon the scene." Later in his presidency, Eisenhower would feel compelled to rebuke a panel of hawkish advisers, caustically observing, "You can't have this kind of war. There just aren't enough bulldozers to scrape the bodies off the streets.

Doing nothing while the middle class is hurting. That's not leadership. Loose regulations and lax enforcement. That's not leadership. That's abandoning our middle class.

We remain fully committed to introducing a cap on social care costs.

There is not often much policy discussion with the Bushes. There isn't much introspection. Several generations of Bush men could pass by in which the great questions of humankind will go undiscussed.

I think the Republican Party is supposed to be the party of less government intrusion.

It would be a matter of concern for government if intrusive data capture has been deployed against Indian citizens or government infrastructure.

I created jobs. Russ Feingold, during that same approximate 30 years, what did he do? He built government. He built it larger and more intrusive.

The Laffer Curve, by the way, was not invented by me.

We expect to adopt tax incentives for businesses that invest in the country.

Americans need to be engaged and invested in the legislative process that affects their daily lives, otherwise we are just democracy in name only.

The human capital of most macroeconomists, heavily invested in demand management, was wiped out by the policy failures of the 1970s.