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Action
Alerts
Liberty
Amendment
HON.
RON PAUL OF TEXAS
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
January 30, 2003
End the Income Tax- Pass the Liberty Amendment
Mr.
Speaker, I am pleased to introduce the Liberty Amendment, which
repeals the 16th Amendment, thus paving the way for real change
in the way government collects and spends the people’s
hard-earned money. The Liberty Amendment also
explicitly forbids the federal government from performing any
action not explicitly authorized by the United States
Constitution.
The
16th Amendment gives the federal government a direct claim on the
lives of American citizens by enabling Congress to levy a direct
income tax on individuals. Until the passage of the 16th
amendment, the Supreme Court had consistently held that Congress
had no power to impose an income tax.
Income
taxes are responsible for the transformation of the federal
government from one of limited powers into a vast leviathan whose
tentacles reach into almost every aspect of American life.
Thanks to the income tax, today the federal government
routinely invades our privacy, and penalizes our every endeavor.
The
Founding Fathers realized that “the power to tax is the power
to destroy,” which is why they did not give the federal
government the power to impose an income tax. Needless to say,
the Founders would be horrified to know that Americans today give
more than a third of their income to the federal government.
Income
taxes not only diminish liberty, they retard economic growth by
discouraging work and production. Our current tax system also
forces Americans to waste valuable time and money on complacence
with an ever-more complex tax code. The increased interest in
flat-tax and national sales tax proposals, as well as the
increasing number of small businesses that questioning the
Internal Revenue Service’s (IRS) “withholding”
system provides further proof that America is tired of the
labyrinthine tax code. Americans are also increasingly fed up
with an IRS that continues to ride roughshod over their civil
liberties, despite recent “pro-taxpayer” reforms.
Mr.
Speaker, America survived and prospered for 140 years without an
income tax, and with a federal government that generally adhered
to strictly constitutional functions, operating with modest
excise revenues. The income tax opened the door to the era (and
errors) of Big Government. I hope my colleagues will help close
that door by cosponsoring the Liberty Amendment.
Rep.
Ron Paul
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