Fiscal experts tell us my opponent's platform
would cost upward of $15 billion more a year than we are now spending.
If he were to try to raise this tremendous amount in new taxes, who would
pay the bill!
If anyone thinks the bill could be paid by
a "soak the rich" policy, he is wrong. The Kennedy program is one of the
cruelest and most vicious "soak the poor" programs ever advocated by any
presidential candidate. And here, on the basis of figures available in
the U.S. Department of the Treasury, is the proof.
If all personal taxable income in excess of
$100,000 a year were taxed 100 percent, the additional Federal revenue
would be only about $300 million, or about 2 percent of what my opponent's
platform would cost.
If all personal taxable income in excess of
$50,000 a year were taxed 100 percent, the additional Federal revenue would
be only about $600 million, or about 4 percent of what my opponent's platform
would cost.
If all personal taxable income in excess of
$25,000 a year were taxed 100 percent, the additional Federal revenue would
be only $1.5 billion or about 10 percent of what my opponent's platform
would cost.
If all personal taxable income in excess of
$15,000 a year were taxed 100 percent, the additional Federal revenue would
be only about $3.1 billion or about 20 percent of what my opponent's platform
would cost.
If all personal taxable income in excess of
$10,000 a year were taxed 100 percent, the additional revenue would be
only about $5.6 billion or about 37 percent of what my opponent's platform
would cost.
These figures are as clear as their meaning
is shocking.
It is the millions of peoples in the lower
income brackets - not the wealthy who would really pay the bill for my
opponent's platform if he tried to finance it by new taxes.
Even if he confiscated all taxable income
above $10,000 a year, some $10 billion annually would have to come from
those who can least afford new taxes - the millions upon millions of Americans
who earn less than $10,000 a year.
Senator Kennedy hopes by sheer repetition
to convince Americans that they are in trouble in almost every department
- world position, military strength, economic progress, scientific and
educational advances.
He, of course, represents himself as the modern
Pied Piper who will pipe the troubles out of the land.
We have listened to his piping in this campaign
and it is clear what would happen.
If he pursued the programs he had advocated
domestically - programs which could only produce cruel inflation and Government
interference with every aspect of our economic life - he could only pipe
us into recession, or worse.
If he pursued the policies abroad which he
has suggested - apology to Khrushchev, retreat in the Pacific, open interference
in Cuba - could only pipe us into grave international crises, or worse.
Take a specific field: Senator Kennedy's campaign
to talk us into a recession has now reached phase 2.
If elected, he says, he will counsel with
President Eisenhower about how to deal with it.
It is quite a political gimmick. First he
conjures up a recession - which we're not having - then he says if elected
he will be glad to meet with President Eisenhower to see how to deal with
it.
The solution of Senator Kennedy's recession
will come from the voters on November 8. If they do what I am fully confident
they will do, he won't need to worry about holding such a conference because
he will not be the new President and there will be no recession.
The American people have an instinct that
is seldom wrong. They know that the way to avoid a recession is to defeat
Senator Kennedy and his grandiose schemes for tampering with an economic
system that has given America in the past 8 years the greatest prosperity
in history.
The American people know what works and what
won't work, and the people know that the strong probability is that the
Senator's election to the Presidency would produce the very recession he
constantly talks about. That's why they are not going to elect him.
That's why his self-serving proposal for a
conference with President Eisenhower is just plain silly.
Senator Kennedy's latest proposal is like
the story of the neighborhood boy who offered to talk with the fire chief
about how to put out the fire he just started.