Wilbur Mills for President 1972
Wilbur Mills for President 1972 Campaign Brochure:
‘What others say they’ll do . . . Mills is doing.’
If you want a 20 per cent increase in Social Security benefits . . . vote for Wilbur Mills. In the close-to-home areas of social security, unemployment compensation and welfare, no American Congressman has done as much as Wilbur Mills to improve the standard of living and quality of life for his fellow Americans. He has been the chief sponsor of every major social security bill that has become law since the beginning of 1958. During this period, social security benefits have been increased five times, with the cumulative increase of these changes totaling 64 per cent. In addition, the social security amendments enacted since early 1958 have vastly expanded and improved unemployment compensation and public assistance programs. These have included increases in benefits to disabled, aged and families without fathers, as well as additional benefits to child health and welfare programs.
Mills-authored legislation has made significant differences in the quality of life for families in which the parents could not work or properly care for children, so that American families could remain together, even during the hardest of times.
If you want protection for the jobs of American workers . . . vote for Wilbur Mills. Wilbur Mills has worked untiringly to protect American jobs from the threat of foreign competition. His alliance with the American working man and woman has produced the Trade Agreements Extension Act of 1958; the Tariff Classification Act of 1962, providing a legal basis for revision of tariff schedules, the first change since 1930; the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, which laid the basis for the Kennedy Round of negotiations and providing assistance to firms and workers being injured by imports: the Automotive Products Trade Act of 1965, providing duty-free flow of trade in automotive Products between the United States and Canada; and the Trade Act of 1970, which would have amended existing trade law to provide additional relief from imports.
If you want the welfare system reformed . . . vote for Wilbur Mills. Other Mills legislation, such as the Public Welfare Amendments of 1962, the Material and Child Health and Mental Retardation Planning Amendments of 1963, Social Security Amendments of 1966 to establish Medicare and Medicaid, and others, have helped millions of Americans live lives of dignity and self-sufficiency when without them there would only be despair.
If you want taxes to stop going up . . . vote for Wilbur Mills. Where taxes are concerned, Wilbur Mills has always fought on the side of the individual American taxpayer. Examples of his concern over rising taxes have included the Revenue Act of 1962, the first federal tax reduction designed to stimulate the economy and promote recovery from the recession of the late fifties and early sixties; the Revenue Act of 1964, which was the largest income tax reduction in the history of the United States; the Excise Tax Reduction Act of 1965, providing a reduction of more than $4 billion in excise taxes for American consumers; the Federal Tax Lien Act of 1966, which was the first comprehensive revision and modernization of those laws concerned with federal tax liens and levies relative to the interests of other creditors; the Foreign Investors Tax Act of 1966, relating to the tax treatment of nonresident aliens and foreign corporations to encourage investments from foreign sources into the United States; the Revenue and Expenditure Control Act of 1968, demanding that the federal government tighten its belt along with the American taxpayer in imposition of the temporary income tax surcharge; and the Tax Re-form Act of 1969, which was the most extensive review of the federal income tax laws since 1913.
‘Draft Wilbur Mills for President’ It's a long way from Kensett, Arkansas to the House Office Building in Washington. It is, as a matter of fact, the distance that young Wilbur Daigh Mills dreamed of going as a schoolboy. His route was along the way of Harvard Law School and a term as county judge at White County, Arkansas. When he was sent, at 29, to represent his state's Second Congressional District in the Seventy-Sixth Congress, he was quickly recognized by senior members as a legislator of abundant and valuable talent. Even before he was elected, however, Wilbur Mills set his sights on the Committee on Ways and Means. As a freshman Congressman he made material contributions to the work of the House of Representatives and earned the esteem of the great chamber's leaders. After only four years in Congress, Wilbur Mills was placed on the Committee on Ways and Means in an action not typical of Congressional protocol. In 1958 he became its chairman, the youngest in history, thus making him one of the two or three most powerful and influential men in the world.
Wilbur Mills' devotion to Congress and the Ways and Means Committee has been visibly beneficial to the Congress and the nation. His colleagues of both parties respect and praise him. As chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means, Wilbur Mills has been courted by Presidents as has no other member of Congress. Four succeeding administrations - Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon - have anxiously waited to hear from Chairman Mills, for it is his committee that must raise the revenues to operate their programs. Presidents listen when Wilbur Mills speaks. In conference, it is said, and in committee work, Chairman Mills has been the Congress' champion. From the men and women in Congress, here are published remarks about Wilbur Mills: "I look at what the country is seeking now. If it were run by a board of directors and they had to select a man strictly on the basis of who would run this country efficiently - they would choose this man." "I am a liberal, but many of the things I stand for are not obtainable today. I think we would be more likely to obtain part of them under a man like Mills." "He's the one man I know who could mold the Democratic Party into a cohesive force nationally - he's not a sectional legislator. "To obtain the service of a man like Wilbur Mills as President of the United States will require the voices of thousands of Americans. The nation must reach out to him. Our voices must be loud enough for the leaders of the Democratic Party to hear, and persuasive enough to make them put aside political alliances in favor of a nominee who can unscramble the federal hodgepodge once and for all."
Wilbur Mills has authored more legislation which was subsequently enacted, for the benefit of the individual than any other member of Congress.