President Bush used his
radio address today to argue for making his ill-conceived tax cuts for the rich permanent. Yet a
recent analysis by the New York Times reveals what was painfully obvious from the start: these tax cuts benefit the elite, the have-mores, or as
Bush likes to call them, his base:
The first data to document the effect of President Bush's tax cuts for investment income show that they have significantly lowered the tax burden on the richest Americans, reducing taxes on incomes of more than $10 million by an average of about $500,000.
No surprise there. The richer you are, the more the you benefit from the President's tax cuts. But what benefit do the vast majority of working Americans making $50,000 or less a year enjoy? They save an average of ten dollars because of the investment tax cuts (for an average of $435 in total tax cut savings). As for which Americans the President values most, well, a picture speaks a thousand words (click to enlarge, graph from a report by Citizens for Tax Justice (PDF)):
From his tax cuts to his reckless and irresponsible budget, the President simply refuses to take us off this unsustainable course of economic disaster. By continuing to push for the permanency of a tax cut which favors only the richest of the rich, the President demonstrates once again that it's party (and profit) above country.
For a sharp contast, I present to you the words of President Bill Clinton. When asked back in September of 2005 about the sacrifices necessary in an era marked by war and hurricanes, Clinton had this to say:
I would repeal the tax cuts for upper-income people. I myself have gotten 4 tax cuts while young Americans have gone off to risk their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan, while we've had this massive natural disaster. We've run up this huge deficit. How are we covering this money? We are borrowing the money from China, Japan, Korea, Saudi Arabia to pay for the suffering of our people in the Gulf area, to pay for the Iraq War, and to cover my tax cuts -- and we are expecting our children to pay the bill. We've made a decision to lower the living standards of our children and grandchildren and to soak other people around the world who don't have the money we do, by and large, to cover our self-indulgence.
An overwhelming majority of Americans agree with that sentiment that our tax system is unjust. A poll released today by ABC finds that 58% of Americans believe the system is unbalanced and unfair. Taxes always seem unfair, but there is something deeply repulsive about the current tax system, a system that is specifically designed by the President to line the pockets of the richest in our nation--his priority, his base.