Home | Business News | Browse by Publication | T | The American Prospect

The great tax shift: the president says his cuts are simply a way of "giving people their money back." But the bill will come due one way or another--and lower- and middle-class households will foot it.

Article Excerpt
THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION CLAIMS THAT THE guiding principle for its fiscal policy has been "lower income taxes for all, with the greatest help for those most in need," as the White House Web site puts it, The reality is starkly different. The tax cuts enacted during George W. Bush's presidency shift the burden of taxation away from upper income, capital-owning households and toward the wage-earning households of the lower and middle classes. For all but the wealthy, this will ultimately cause substantial harm, Shifting costs to future generations of workers to finance tax boons for today's owners of capital is unproductive, unfair, and unwise.

The Bush administration presided over two major tax cuts, in 2001 and 2003, along with a smaller one in 2002. Those cuts officially were going to cost the federal government $1.7 trillion between 2001 and 2014, and to add nearly $1 trillion in higher payments on the national debt over that period. That may sound like a lot, but in fact the official estimates are low, artificially held down by gimmicks, including the ostensible sunsets of all the tax cuts in 2010 or before. At least under the administration's plans, these tax cuts would continue beyond their official expiration dates. If they are extended, they would reduce revenue by $3.6 trillion between 2001 and 2014 and cost a whopping $4.8 trillion when the additional debt service is included.

Without a doubt, and despite White House rhetoric to...

View this article FREE - Now for a Limited Time, try Goliath Business News
Free for 3 Days!