Barack Obama Quotes About Taxes

• I can make a firm pledge, under my plan, no family making less than $250,000 a year will see any form of tax increase. Not your income tax, not your payroll tax, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes.

  Barack Obama

  Family, Years, Payroll Tax

  Speech in Dover, New Hampshire, www.presidency.ucsb.edu. September 12, 2008.

• But let me perfectly clear, because I know you'll hear the same old claims that rolling back these tax breaks means a massive tax increase on the American people: if your family earns less than $250,000 a year, you will not see your taxes increased a single dime. I repeat: not one single dime.

  Barack Obama

  Family, Mean, Years

  First Speech to a Joint Session of Congress, delivered 24 February 2009

• I will cut taxes - cut taxes - for 95 percent of all working families, because, in an economy like this, the last thing we should do is raise taxes on the middle class.

  Barack Obama

  Cutting, Class, Lasts

  Democratic National Convention Presidential Nomination Acceptance, delivered 28 August 2008, INVESCO Field at Mile High Stadium, Denver, Colorado

• If we choose to keep those tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires, if we choose to keep a tax break for corporate jet owners, if we choose to keep tax breaks for oil and gas companies that are making hundreds of billions of dollars, then that means we've got to cut some kids off from getting a college scholarship.

  Barack Obama

  Mean, Kids, Cutting

  News conference in the East Wing, www.nytimes.com. June 29, 2011.

• One faction of one party, in one house of Congress, in one branch of government, doesn't get to shut down the entire government just to refight the results of an election.

  Barack Obama

  Leadership, Money, Party

  "Full Transcript: : President Obama’s Sept. 30 remarks on the looming government shutdown". www.washingtonpost.com. September 30, 2013.

• I'd like to help struggling homeowners who can't pay their mortgages, I'd like to invest in our crumbling infrastructure, I'd like to reform the tax system so multimillionaires can't pretend their earnings are capital gains and pay at the rate of 15 percent. I'd like to make public higher education free, and pay for it with a small transfer tax on all financial transactions. I'd like to do much more - a new new deal for Americans. But Republicans are blocking me at every point.

  Barack Obama

  Block, Struggle, Helping

• No party has a monopoly on wisdom. No democracy works without compromise. But when Governor Romney and his allies in Congress tell us we can somehow lower our deficit by spending trillions more on new tax breaks for the wealthy - well, you do the math. I refuse to go along with that. And as long as I'm President, I never will.

  Barack Obama

  Party, Math, Long

  "Transcript: President Obama's DNC Speech". abcnews.go.com. September 6, 2012.

• In December, I agreed to extend the tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans because it was the only way I could prevent a tax hike on middle-class Americans. But we cannot afford $1 trillion worth of tax cuts for every millionaire and billionaire in our society. We can't afford it. And I refuse to renew them again.

  Barack Obama

  Inspirational, Cutting, Class

  "Obama’s Speech on Reducing the Budget", www.nytimes.com. April 13, 2011.

• To the extent that we've got a fiscal crisis right now, part of it is prompted by a bullheaded insistence on the part of the president, for example, that we should extend all of his tax cuts, make all of them permanent.

  Barack Obama

  Money, Cutting, President

• We're going to have to invest in the American people again, in tax cuts for the middle class, in health care for all Americans, and college for every young person who wants to go. In businesses that can create the new energy economy of the future. In policies that will lift wages and will grow our middle class. These are the policies I have fought for my entire career.

  Barack Obama

  Cutting, College, Class

• We've got a tax code that is encouraging flight of jobs and outsourcing. And that's why we've specifically recommended in this campaign that Congress change our tax code so that we stop giving tax breaks to companies that are moving to Mexico and China and other places, and start putting those tax breaks into companies that are investing here in the United States.

  Barack Obama

  Jobs, Moving, Giving

  Barack Obama and Alan Keyes Illinois Senate Debate hosted by Illinois Radio Network in the Old State Capitol in Springfield, Illinois, www.keyesarchives.com. October 12, 2004.

• Medicare in particular, will run out of money, and we will not be able to sustain that program.

  Barack Obama

  Running, Political, Matter

  "The Ed Show" with Ed Schultz, www.nbcnews.com. July 11, 2011.

• Short term, the most important thing is to put people back to work ... If they're working, that means they're paying taxes, that means that they're buying goods and services - and the economy, instead of being on a downward spiral, starts back up on an upward spiral.

  Barack Obama

  Mean, People, Important

• I think that we've had an economy that's been out of balance for too long. So the general principle of raising taxes on higher income Americans, like myself, and providing relief to those who haven't benefited as much from this new global economy, I think is a sound one.

  Barack Obama

  Thinking, Long, Balance

  Interview with John Harwood, www.cnbc.com. June 10, 2008.

• I will eliminate capital-gains taxes for the small businesses and the startups that will create the high-wage, high-tech jobs of tomorrow

  Barack Obama

  Jobs, Taxation, Gains

  Barack Obama (2008). “Yes, We Can”, p.73, BoD – Books on Demand

• Here's what I can tell the American people: 95 percent of you will get a tax cut. And if you make less than $250,000, less than a quarter-million dollars a year, then you will not see one dime's worth of tax increase.

  Barack Obama

  Money, Cutting, Years

  "The First Presidential Debate". "NewsHour" with Jim Lehrer, www.nytimes.com. September 26, 2008.

• Now, because he knows that his economic theories don't work, he's been spending these last few days calling me every name in the book. Lately he's called me a socialist for wanting to roll-back the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans so we can finally give tax relief to the middle class. I don't know what's next. By the end of the week he'll be accusing me of being a secret communist because I shared my toys in kindergarten. I shared my peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

  Barack Obama

  Funny, Sarcastic, Book

  "Obama Mocks Socialist Attacks: 'I Shared My Toys'" by Sam Stein, www.huffingtonpost.com. November 29, 2008.

• We've subsidized oil companies for a century. That's long enough. It's time to end the taxpayer giveaways to an industry that rarely has been more profitable, and double-down on a clean energy industry that never has been more promising. Pass clean energy tax credits. Create these jobs.

  Barack Obama

  Jobs, Oil, Long

  Third Presidential State of the Union Address, delivered 24 January 2012, Washington, D.C.

• You will not see any of your taxes increase one single dime.

  Barack Obama

  Dimes, Increase, Taxes

  "Without evidence, Wash. Times claimed Obama "reneged" on campaign promises" by Nathan Tabak, www.mediamatters.org. April 8, 2009.

• The last thing you want to do is raise taxes in the middle of the recession because that would just suck up and take more demand out of the economy and put businesses in a further hole.

  Barack Obama

  Demand, Want, Lasts

• I want to reform the tax code so that it's simple, fair, and asks the wealthiest households to pay higher taxes on incomes over $250,000 - the same rate we had when Bill Clinton was president; the same rate we had when our economy created nearly 23 million new jobs, the biggest surplus in history, and a lot of millionaires to boot.

  Barack Obama

  Jobs, Simple, New Job

  Second Democratic Presidential Nomination Acceptance Speech, delivered 6 September 2012, Charlotte, North Carolina

• In fact, the best thing we could do on taxes for all Americans is to simplify the individual tax code. This will be a tough job, but members of both parties have expressed an interest in doing this, and I am prepared to join them.

  Barack Obama

  Jobs, Party, Facts

  Second Presidential State of the Union Address, delivered 25 January 2011, Washington, D.C.

• Now you have a choice: we can give more tax breaks to corporations that ship jobs overseas, or we can start rewarding companies that open new plants and train new workers and create new jobs here, in the United States of America.

  Barack Obama

  Jobs, America, Giving

  Second Democratic Presidential Nomination Acceptance Speech, delivered 6 September 2012, Charlotte, North Carolina

• perhaps I possess a certain Midwestern sensibility that I inherited from my mother and her parents, a sensibility that Warren Buffet seems to share: that at a certain point one has enough, that you can derive as much pleasure from a Picasso hanging in a museum as from one that's hanging in your den, that you can get an awfully good meal in a restaurant for less than twenty dollars, and that once your drapes cost more than the average American's yearly salary, then you can afford to pay a bit more in taxes.

  Barack Obama

  Mother, Museums, Average

• And what would help minority workers are the same things that would help white workers: the opportunity to earn a living wage, the education and training that lead to such jobs, labor laws and tax laws that restore some balance to the distribution of the nation's wealth.

  Barack Obama

  Jobs, Opportunity, Law

  Barack Obama (2006). “The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream”, p.171, Crown

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