FALL INTO THE GAP - THE INCOME GAP, THAT IS
A good place to start is the sad reality that those who benefited most from Bush's tax cuts were those who needed it least:
According to the most recent figures from the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the top 1% of households enjoyed an increase in their annual income averaging $180,000, while middle-income folks saw a rise of just $400 and lower-income households only saw a $200 bump. And so now the share of the income gained by the top 1% of households places them at the highest level on record – while the share of the income gained for the middle and bottom quintiles are the smallest on record.
Why, it would take the median income family three entire years to earn just the INCREASE of $180,000 that the ultra-rich reaped.
This starkly lopsided growth has brought income inequality to the highest level since the CBO began keeping records, and has resulted in the greatest concentration of wealth at the top since the time of the Great Depression
So, what exactly does it take to qualify for the lifestyle of the "Rich and Famous"? To join those elite one percenters you would have to have an annual income of at least $462,000. But, my friends, that’s just entry-level – these cohorts of Bush (and apparently Robin Leach) last year raked in an average income of $1.5 million. That figures out to $722 an hour ... assuming you never took any time off for vacations or holidays.
BUSH TAX CUTS: BIG WINNERS – BIG LOSERS
Beginning from 2001 when Bush’s tax cut laws favoring his ultra-rich friends started being phased in, there has been about $1 trillion dollars in tax cut goodies passed out. Let’s see whose pockets those tax dollars ended up in through research courtesy of the Urban Institute-Brookings Institution Tax Policy Center:
Households in the bottom quintile received tax cuts in 2006 that averaged $20 – and that raised their incomes by an average of 0.3%
Households in the middle quintile received tax cuts averaging $740 – and that raised their after-tax incomes an average of 2.5%
Even the "Wall Street Journal" was forced to report from results based on the CBO’s analysis, that the richest 1% of taxpayers are going to be rewarded with reduced taxes of well over $44,000 – and that’s about a sixty-fold greater handout than what a middle-income family will get.
But if you happen to have an income exceeding $1 million ... you, my friend, were favored with an average tax KICKBACK of $118,000 in 2006
So the exceedingly small - but exceedingly exclusive - subset tiny fraction of the top 1 percenters – the Millionaires Club – will be showered with savings that total 20% of ALL the goodies handed out.
As a result of the Bush-cum-Republican tax cuts, the share of paying for our nation's services is shifting from the very wealthy to the middle class – which only serves to further widen the gap between the ultra-rich and the rest of us.
BIG LIES: SO VERY MANY, SO LITTLE TIME
I suppose we should start with the easy lies first.
"You cut taxes and the tax revenues increase." — President Bush, February 8, 2006
Even Bush’s own administration’s leading economists reject that old canard:
Edward Lazear, the current chair of President’s Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers, has stated, "I certainly would not claim that tax cuts pay for themselves." And N. Gregory Mankiw, President’s Bush’s former CEA chair and a well-known Harvard economics professor, has written that there is "no credible evidence" that "tax revenues ... rise in the face of lower tax rates." Mankiw compared an economist who says that tax cuts pay for themselves to a "snake oil salesman trying to sell a miracle cure." (Boy, does he know his old boss or what?!)
Continuing in his role of Dissembler and Chief, in Bush’s State of the Union Address this year he said that if his tax cuts are not made permanent, all families will lose their tax cuts worth an "AVERAGE" of $1,800.
As with most statements by Bush, the devil is in the details. Only about 15% of households will get a tax cut as large as $1,800. The other 85% of Americans will see an amount much smaller than that "AVERAGE" touted by Bush. In fact more than half of all families will get a tax cut LESS than $600.
Amazing what you can do with "AVERAGES" when you throw in what the top 1% is going to reap.
But that’s just what Bush alone lied about ... get the entire Republican Party together and let’s see the whoppers they can come up with.
Congressional Republicans are trying to claim that the capital gains and dividends tax cuts actually FAVORED low-income Americans. I know, you’re saying, "But you can’t get there from here." Well, you simply are not familiar with their use of the Humpty Dumpty "Through the Looking Glass" Fuzzy Math approach of "When I use a number, it means just what I choose it to mean ... neither more nor less."
GOP lawmakers started out with a reasonable estimate of their tax cut impact using the data from the bipartisan Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation. But to their chagrin, these figures revealed it heavily favored the ultra-rich.
OOPS! They don’t want that.
So Republicans decided they would ONLY measure the impact on taxpayers who actually got anything from the capital gains and dividend tax cuts. Well, the overwhelming majority of middle- and lower-income Americans aren’t heavily invested in the stock market and didn’t get any benefit from those tax cuts – in fact, this eliminated about 93% of people who got no benefit.
Voila! This little accounting chicanery inflates the "apparent" size of the dividend tax cut for middle- and lower-income Americans by 17-fold – and the capital gains tax cut by a factor of 30!
(Now some of you may object by pointing out that most people actually are invested in the stock market. And while that’s true, you must remember that the majority do so through a 401k or an IRA – which are tax-deferred instruments that don’t generate a Schedule D. Update [2008-5-4 10:25:8 by dmhlt 66]: And when you do begin taking distributions, if it's from a traditional IRA it will be taxed at the higher "ordinary income" rate.)
But Republicans still weren’t satisfied, so they decided to take those numbers for a second "spin" and preposterously elected to recalculate the tax cuts as a percentage of income taxes paid. Since on average people making less than $50,000 pay a relatively small federal income tax (about $440 each), using their Fuzzy Math Percentage Method it further inflated the GOP’s calculation of the size of their tax cut for lower income groups. And conversely, since rich taxpayers on average pay a sizeable amount, this made the tax cuts for the rich look relatively smaller.
THE BOTTOM LINE
So the rich get richer and the poor get poorer – all courtesy of Bush and the Republican Party. What else is new? Well, one hopes that for those with a synapse that actually works it'll be helpful if we take a look at the impact on John and Jane Q. Public:
The cost of the Bush tax cuts going to just the richest one percent in 2008 (about $79.5 billion) is more than the entire budget for the Department of Education this year ($68 billion), almost twice as much as the entire budget for the Department of Homeland Security this year ($42.3 billion) and over ten times as much as the budget for the Environmental Protection Agency ($7.5 billion).
The total cost of the Bush tax cuts when fully phased in will add up to be about $2.6 TRILLION. Putting that in perspective, the federal government only collected about $2.6 trillion in revenues for all of last year.
Based on figures from both the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and the CBO, after inheriting several record budget SURPLUSES from the Clinton administration (give the man his due), Bush has now turned them into record-breaking DEFICITS.
In fact, the White House has admitted as much as evidenced by the last budget proposals it submitted that slash public services:
Federal funding for veterans’ benefits will be about a tenth lower
Federal funding for education and social services will be a fifth lower
Federal funding for environmental programs will be about a fourth lower,
Federal funding for transportation will be about a third lower
Federal funding for community development will be about two-thirds lower
As former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan warned, "If you’re going to lower taxes, you shouldn’t be borrowing essentially the tax cut. And doing that over the long run is not a stable fiscal situation."
When we are currently in a war with no end in sight, when families literally have to decide between spending their hard-earned money on food or medicines, when the shadow of a recession – or worse – looms over us, Bush and his Republican cronies have elected to make extending their tax cuts permanently a top priority. I’m sure the richest one percent of Americans will be grateful.
But if any of you, your family or friends happen to use the public roads, have children in public schools, rely on Medicare or Medicaid, care about the environment or will be in need of Veterans benefits ... well, you’re going to see a change in the quality of your life because of the reductions in public services courtesy of the Bush/Republican tax cuts.
But, hey – at least the richest one percent will be doing fine, thank you very much.
