Text 1575, 126 rader
Skriven 2004-08-30 17:48:28 av Ross Cassell (1:123/456)
Ärende: Democrat Conspiracy Lies!
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* Originally in MATZDOBRE
* Crossposted in POL_INC
* Crossposted in politics
* Crossposted in WHAT'S_HOT!

Hello All!

http://www.detnews.com/2004/editorial/0408/27/a09-255537.htm

Hmmmm, I wonder if conwebwatch has bad things to say of the Detroit News?

At anyrate, it will take minutes fo the Democrat partisans to go into
convulsions!


Bush fails to get deserved credit for tax cut benefits

Despite reporting distortions, a congressional report shows the rich pay
proportionately more in taxes while all income earners do better

By Donald Luskin

A report from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has Democratic
presidential candidate John Kerry claiming it proves that Over the last four
years, the burden of taxes has shifted from the wealthy to the middle class.

Those are politically motivated lies that distort the findings of the report.
Here's the truth.

The report proves that what President Bush said about his tax cuts is true: Tax
relief is for everyone who pays income taxes.

It's true for the rich, and it's true for the not-so-rich. Across 109.4 million
tax-paying households from the wealthiest 1 percent with incomes averaging over
$1 million to the lowest-earning 20 percent of people with incomes averaging
$14,900 the report shows that all income classes have seen their income tax
rates lowered thanks to Bush's cuts in 2001, 2002 and 2003.

The CBO report shows how 2004 income tax rates have dropped for everyone
compared with tax laws in force in 2000.

The report also shows that Bush's tax cuts have been progressive that is, they
have shifted the share of the overall federal income tax burden toward the
wealthy and away from lower-income earners. Without the Bush tax cuts, the
highest-earning 20 percent of households this year would have paid 78.4 percent
of all federal income taxes. Now, after the Bush tax cutes, their share of the
burden has risen to 82.1 percent. Every other group now pays a smaller share of
the total income tax burden.

Another part of the CBO report shows how the income tax burden has shifted
upward for the rich and downward for everyone else.

What a victory for compassionate conservatism. Everybody gets an income tax
cut, and when it's all done the rich end up paying proportionately more.

The report also shows that Bush managed to craft a tax reduction package that
even benefits the lowest-earning taxpayers who already pay what amount to
negative income taxes. That's right, thanks to various refundable tax credits,
before the Bush tax cuts the lowest-earning 20 percent of income earners not
only paid no income taxes on average they received money from the Internal
Revenue Service. Now that's compassionate.

But will Kerry or the media give Bush one ounce of credit for any of that? No,
the liberal establishment always has to find a way to demonize anything that
comes from the policies of Bush.

Virtually parroting the first paragraph of a Democratic congressional press
release, the Wall Street Journal story began: President Bush's three tax-cut
laws will reduce this year's income taxes for the richest 1 percent of
taxpayers by an average of $78,460, more than 70 times the average benefit for
the middle 20 percent of taxpayers, congressional analysts found.

First, the Journal gives the false impression that the statistics cited in the
first paragraph are from the CBO report. They are not. They appear nowhere in
that report. Instead, they are from a separate analysis of the CBO report by
the Democratic members of the Joint Economic Committee of Congress.

Second, the Journal's version of the Democrats analysis inserts a critical and
erroneous word that was deliberately not used by the Democrats. The Journal
refers to income taxes when the Democrats just refer to taxes.

It's an important distinction, because the 2002 tax cuts allowed for greater
deductibility of capital expenses for corporations a deliberate (and
successful) attempt to stimulate corporate capital investment after the
terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The CBO attributes those corporate tax
cuts to individuals, based on the extent to which individuals receive dividends
and capital gains.

Naturally, the highest-income earning taxpayers will get the bulk of this even
though all taxpayers enjoy the many benefits of a stronger economy as a result
of greater capital investment by corporations.

If that corporate tax cut and the CBO's quirky methodology for attributing it
to individuals it is eliminated from the analysis, then the 70-1 advantage of
the top 1 percent versus the middle 20 percent is almost cut in half. Yes, the
Democrats surely used data selectively to make their claims as extreme as
possible — that’s their partisan job. But the supposedly objective Journal made
the data seem even more extreme than the Democrats did.

Third, the Journal eliminated a critical word from the Democrats press release
2004. The corporate provisions of the 2002 tax cut expire after 2004, so the
extreme numbers focused on by the Democrats settle down considerably in 2005
and thereafter.

Robert Williams, the economist who is the chief author of the Congressional
Budget Office's report, told me he was disappointed with the way his work has
been distorted.

You would think seasoned congressional staff members would know by now how
Washington works in an election year. But apparently even they have never seen
presidential candidates and the media as rabidly partisan as they are right
now.

Donald Luskin is chief investment officer of Trend Macrolytics LLC, an
independent economics and investment-research firm in Menlo Park, Calif. Send
letters to The News at 615 W. Lafayette, Detroit, MI 48226, (313) 222-6417 or
letters@detnews.com.

==
Ross
ICQ: 5305939
Food For thought:
John Kerry Is Not Sargeant York!
... Hors d'oeuvres--a ham sandwich cut into forty pieces.
--- GoldED+/LNX 1.1.5-30512
 * Origin: The Eastern Star - Spartanburg, SC USA (1:123/456)