Lyndon B. Johnson photo

Identical Remarks at Meetings With the Business Committee for Tax Reduction and With the Citizens Committee for Tax Reduction and Revision

January 09, 1964

YOU have come here today to offer, once again, your hand and your help in support of the tax bill. That support was never more needed or welcome, than it is now.

Today, as you know, I am meeting with two distinguished groups of Americans united for tax reduction. I will say to you exactly what I said to the other. I will do it because there is not one tax reduction bill for business and another for labor, not one for liberals and another for conservatives, not one for Democrats and another for Republicans. There is only one tax reduction bill, and that bill is good for every American citizen--in whatever walk of life, in whatever income group--because it is good for America.

We have been talking about the tax bill for almost a year now--we have had tax reduction on our minds for even longer than that. It is high time we got tax reduction off our minds and onto our law books now, without delay.

Uncertainty is the greatest enemy of business investment. We need to vote the bill up or down, but we need to vote on it. Tax reduction will not solve all our problems. But no single step will do more to help ease so many of our major economic ills--unemployment, idle capacity, chronic deficits in our budget and in our international accounts.

Every single month that we delay on the tax bill makes more than $550 million worth of difference to America's economy--because more than $550 million a month will be added to take-home pay and extra purchasing power resulting from the new withholding rates. Those withholding rates cannot go into effect until after the tax bill is passed.

Every month we say "Wait" on the tax bill is another month we say "Halt" to the expanded business plans and extra investment that businessmen will only undertake when there is tax reduction they know they can count on--not tax reduction they think they Can Count on.

Every month we say "Wait" on the tax bill makes a world of difference to those four million Americans to whom this prosperous land offers no means of livelihood--and to many more who will join their ranks if we do not start now to produce more jobs.

It is time we stopped talking about these problems and started doing something about them. It is time, now, to put the tax bill to work for a greater and growing America for all Americans.

Every day of talk in the Senate costs workers new jobs.

You men in this room today can be powerful and persuasive influences in pushing this bill out of committee--and onto the floor where it can be voted on.

We need your help. We need it now.

Note: The President met with the executive committee of the Business Committee for Tax Reduction at 12:50 p.m. in the Cabinet Room at the White House, and with the Citizens Committee for Tax Reduction and Revision at 4:15 p.m. in the Fish Room.

Lyndon B. Johnson, Identical Remarks at Meetings With the Business Committee for Tax Reduction and With the Citizens Committee for Tax Reduction and Revision Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/242283

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