The United States' taxes are too high, and it's exciting to be creating "once-in-a-generation" tax reform legislation, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady said Friday.
"We are an overtaxed nation," the Texas Republican told Fox News' "Happening Now" program, and he's looking forward to "the prospect of lowering taxes on Americans, simplifying it, getting rid of all these special deductions and loopholes, but more importantly getting people bigger paycheck, getting America back."
On Thursday, the House narrowly passed its budget, as 12 GOP lawmakers from high-taxed states voted against the measure, because they do not like a tax reform proposal to remove a loophole allowing people to write off their state and local income taxes.
Brady said that there can be an agreement reached, however.
"We start with common ground," Brady said. "We all agree, let's keep help for your home mortgage and charitable contributions and let's keep the child and college credits in place. We do that as well."
At the same time, Brady said, lawmakers are looking at high-tax states where taxpayers are "just getting hammered."
"We want to make sure families are better off, regardless of where you live, so we are taking this very seriously," Brady said. "We are working with these lawmakers. We're making progress. We aren't there yet. I'm hopeful at the end of the day we can find a good solution for them."
Many of the high-tax states are run by Democratic legislatures, but Brady insisted tax reform is "not a red-state or a blue-state issue."
"We want lower taxes at every level," he said. "We want Americans just to keep more of what they earn, so we're going to do our part from the federal level to accomplish exactly that. I'm hopeful that the state and local governments will do the same."
What is known, though, is that when former Presidents John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan cut taxes, the economy, including state and local government revenues "took off," Brady said.
"If we get people back to work, higher paychecks, better jobs and jobs coming back to America," it's really good for everybody," Brady said.
President Donald Trump has said that taxpayers won't lose their ability to deduct 401K contributions, but Brady has refused to rule that out.
"I talked to the president twice this week," Brady said. "We want to increase the amount that you can give to your 401K or IRA up to $20,000 or more. And we want to create incentives. Most families in these plans are only saving $200 a month. That will make it for them in retirement. They will be in trouble. We're exchanging ideas with the president on how best we help people save more and save sooner in their life."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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