June 22, 2003

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Mr. Bush kept emphasizing the tax benefits for people with modest incomes, not the more extensive tax relief he wanted for the well heeled. He often had onstage with him a couple with two children and an income of $40,000 or $50,000 whose taxes would be cut by more than $1,000, mostly because of the increase in the child tax credit.

But the indisputable fact is that the bulk of the tax cut will go to the wealthy. A study by Citizens for Tax Justice, a liberal research institute whose calculations have gone unchallenged, found that half of all taxpayers would get a cut of less than $100 a year this year and that by 2005, three-quarters would get less than $100.

On the other hand, almost two-thirds of all the tax savings will go to the wealthiest 10 percent of taxpayers, and the richest 1 percent will get an average tax reduction of nearly $100,000 a year.

That's from an article in yesterday's NYT, entitled "Bush May Have Exaggerated, but Did He Lie?" Here's another opinion about that.

The first article is relatively kind, explaining that FDR occasionally stretched his language a bit; the second is more politely angry. Read 'em and think about the amount of money this President is raising from the beneficiaries of those tax cuts. He expects to get $5 million in Manhattan this weekend, in addition to the $2 million or so he got last week in Georgia. I'm willing to bet there were very few of those average Americans in attendance at either event.

Posted by Linkmeister at June 22, 2003 09:39 PM
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From the Rosenbaum article in Sunday's NYTimes, Linkmeister quotes this:

Mr. Bush kept emphasizing the tax benefits for people with modest incomes, not the more extensive tax relief he wanted for the well heeled. He often had onstage with him a couple with two children and an income of $40,000 or $50,000 whose taxes would be cut by more than $1,000, mostly because of the increase in the child tax credit.

Perhaps some Democratic candidate ought to point out that Dubya would have to find somewhere over 100 such families to match the cut in Dick and Lynne Cheney's tax bill.

Posted by: N in Seattle at June 24, 2003 12:29 PM