Petard? Tax cuts propaganda meets reality

about those Bush tax cuts for the rich …

“To be fair, these two decade-apart positions are not entirely incompatible. Bush cut the tax bills of the rich by much bigger dollar amounts than the tax bills of everyone else. Still, more middle-class people got a tax cut than rich people, and many of them got a bigger reduction in percentage terms, too: The top tax rate fell 4.6 percentage points; the lowest rate fell 5, and the second-lowest rate fell 13.

As a result, The Joint Committee on Taxation says extending the middle- class tax cuts will shave $2.7 trillion in revenue over 10 years. The White House says ending the tax cuts for the richest 2 percent would raise $849 billion over a decade. In short, less than one-fourth of the Bush tax cuts benefit “the rich.”

But you’d never have known that latter point from the way Bush’s critics talked at the time.”

A. Barton Hinkle takes a look at reality in George W. Bush, Middle Class Champion, Less than one-fourth of the Bush tax cuts benefit “the rich”.

The tax cuts that helped spur recovery from the Tech Bubble recession ten years ago have been a class envy lightning rod for years. As with many such issues, they were misrepresented for the convenience of bashing an opponent and promoting an idea. Now that the tax cuts are set to expire, reality is back on the table. If they are allowed to expire, the incessant assertions that the tax cuts were only for the rich will hit many non-rich in the wallet, which makes the reality much harder to hide and deny.

That there is still a problem with bias and point of view is evident in how many calls there are for Republicans to bend and allow higher taxes and how few (if any) there are for Democrats to bend and tackle entitlements and spending.