# Harry S. Truman — "the wrong kind of tax reduction" > [!quote] "I am convinced that this bill represents the wrong kind of tax reduction, at the wrong time. … It reduces taxes in the high income brackets to a grossly disproportionate extent as compared with the reduction in the low income brackets. … It fails to give relief where relief is most needed." > — Harry S. Truman, Veto of the Income Tax Reduction Bill (H.R. 1), June 16, 1947 ## Context After Republicans took Congress in 1946 promising tax cuts, Truman vetoed their income-tax-reduction bills three times in 1947–48, twice making the cut's distribution his central objection. He argued the bills lavished relief on top earners while doing little for the families who needed it, and that cutting taxes amid postwar inflation was fiscally reckless besides. ## Why this matters A president spending political capital — against a hostile Congress, in an election cycle — to *block* a tax cut on the ground that it was tilted to the wealthy. Truman's standard is the distributional one at the heart of tax fairness: a cut is judged not by its size but by who it helps, and one that favors "the high income brackets to a grossly disproportionate extent" while skipping "relief where relief is most needed" is illegitimate. It is the mirror image of the modern supply-side claim that across-the-board rate cuts are self-evidently good. (Congress overrode the third veto; the Revenue Act of 1948 became law.) ## Verification - **Primary source:** [Harry S. Truman Library, Veto of Bill To Reduce Income Taxes, June 16, 1947](https://www.trumanlibrary.gov/library/public-papers/116/veto-bill-reduce-income-taxes); [The American Presidency Project](https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/veto-bill-reduce-income-taxes). - **Status:** Verbatim from the official veto message. Undisputed. ## Related quotes - [[Franklin D. Roosevelt - taxes according to ability to pay]] — the principle Truman is defending against rollback. - [[Barack Obama - the Buffett Rule]] — the same distributional test, applied 64 years later. - Featured in [[Presidents on Tax Fairness]].