One hopes after the latest IRS data just released (ealry to the Wall St. Journal subs req- the official report will be out Tuesday online) that we can all move on with regard to the efficacy of the 2003 Bush Supply Side Tax Cuts. Those on the redistributionist left claimed they would “destroy the economy,” “blow a hole in the deficit,” and that the “jobless recovery” was the worst since “Herbert Hoover.”
They left-class warriors like Kerry and Pelossi were proven wrong on every account, and not one intellectually honest liberal who opposed the very tax cuts that have benefited their contituents and themselves the most (i.e. Warren Bufett who greatly beniefited himself and his shareholders as a direct result of the cut in dividends and cap gains to 15%) has acknowledged this fact.
Now, just in time for the November mid-terms they are ignoring all this and attempting to re-frame the debate by now claiming, that regardless of the nearly 4% GDP growth over the past 3 years since the tax cuts went into effect, the $13 trillion increase in asset values over the past 36 months, and the jobless rate of 4.7%, that “yes the economy is doing well but but only for the rich.”
This assertion like the others are false. Here are the facts.
The poor are paying less income taxes under Bush than they did under Clinton:
First, the new data show that the bottom 50% of Americans in income — U.S. households with an income below the median of $44,389 — paid a smaller share of total income taxes in 2004 (3.3%) than in Bill Clinton’s last year in office (3.9%). That 3.3% is the lowest share of total income taxes paid by the bottom half of earners in at least 30 years, and probably ever. The majority of American families with an income below $40,000 pay no income tax at all today, and many of them also get a welfare subsidy from the Earned Income Tax Credit that effectively offsets much of what they pay in payroll taxes.
The Bush tax cuts have been highly “progressive” as we have said all along.
But the top 5% and 10% of earners saw an increase in their tax share over that same period, with the top 5%’s share rising to 57.1% in 2004 from 56.5% in 2000.
What about the top 1% you ask?
Between 2002 and 2004, the income tax share of the top 0.1% of earners rose to 17.4% from 15.4%. A reasonable conclusion is that much of this increase reflects tax payments on capital gains and dividends — which have soared by an astounding 79% and 35%, respectively, since the rate cuts.
For those like Gene Sperling- ex-Clinton economic advisor- who claim that the Bush Years have produced a “disappointing decade on inequality” unlike the “shared prosperity” of the Clinton years:
During the Clinton Presidency, the share of total income earned by the richest 1% increased to a post-World War II high of 20.8% in 2000, from 13.8% in 1993. By contrast, in the first four years of the Bush Presidency, the income share of the top 1% fell slightly to 19.0% from 20.8%.
Funny, I don’t remember seeing too many front page stories in the NY Times or any other major media pubication about the “inequality” of the “roaring 90s” but something tells me that’s all we will be hearing up until the Nov elections. When you don’t have the facts on your side, all you can do is lie and make it up as you go along.
This type of class warfare is unnecessarily divisive during a time in our nation’s history when we should be totally united in defeating the global Jihadists. But what else would you expect from people so despearate to reaquire political power that they would put politics over national security.
Is it just me, or this constant leftist criticism and sniping getting old for anybody else?