Do politicians ever lower tax rates? Yes they do, but not often enough.

During his State of the Union speech in 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson discussed the Revenue Act which ultimately led to the lowering of income tax rates.

You can read more about the Revenue Act of 1964 here, which lowered the individual income tax rates and the corporate income tax rates.

Here is a script of what President Johnson speaks in the video:

Above all, we must release $11 billion of tax reduction into the private spending stream to create new jobs and new markets in every area of this land.

These programs are obviously not for the poor or the underprivileged alone. Every American will benefit by the extension of social security to cover the hospital costs of their aged parents. Every American community will benefit from the construction or modernization of schools, libraries, hospitals, and nursing homes, from the training of more nurses and from the improvement of urban renewal in public transit. And every individual American taxpayer and every corporate taxpayer will benefit from the earliest possible passage of the pending tax bill from both the new investment it will bring and the new jobs that it will create.

That tax bill has been thoroughly discussed for a year. Now we need action. The new budget clearly allows it. Our taxpayers surely deserve it. Our economy strongly demands it. And every month of delay dilutes its benefits in 1964 for consumption, for investment, and for employment.

For until the bill is signed, its investment incentives cannot be deemed certain, and the withholding rate cannot be reduced—and the most damaging and devastating thing you can do to any businessman in America is to keep him in doubt and to keep him guessing on what our tax policy is. And I say that we should now reduce to 14 percent instead of 15 percent our withholding rate.

I therefore urge the Congress to take final action on this bill by the first of February, if at all possible. For however proud we may be of the unprecedented progress of our free enterprise economy over the last three years, we should not and we cannot permit it to pause.

In 1963, for the first time in history, we crossed the 70-million job mark, but we will soon need more than 75 million jobs. In 1963 our gross national product reached the $600 billion level—$100 billion higher than when we took office. But it easily could and it should be still $30 billion higher today than it is.

Wages and profits and family income are also at their highest levels in history—but I would remind you that four million workers and 13 percent of our industrial capacity are still idle today.

We need a tax cut now to keep this country moving.

For our goal is not merely to spread the work. Our goal is to create more jobs.

(Speech source: Miller Center)

A note to today’s politicians: Johnson was right. Lowering income tax helps the economy. It puts money in the hands of Americans and fuels economic growth through spending and innovation. As today’s tax rates increase, people have less to spend, they are forced to rely on credit, and they no longer rely on themselves but on government handouts.

Wake up, Washington, this increased taxation HAS to change!

Tags: income tax reform, revenue act, Revenue Act 1964, tax rate reduction, tax reduction, tax reduction law, Tax Revenue Act, taxes and the president

This entry was posted on Friday, May 28th, 2010 at 9:24 am and is filed under Income Tax, Tax Reform. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.