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http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/02/cbo-how-hosed-are-we/252375/
The latest Budget and Economic Outlook is out from the CBO, and boy is it grim reading. The projections continue to deteriorate, largely because the recession has been longer and deeper than the CBO projected. We can now expect $1 trillion deficits even past Obama's first term.
Aha! You want to say. "It's mostly the fault of George Bush and his nefarious tax cuts for the rich!"
If only it were so simple. The ten year cost of the Bush tax cuts is $2.8 trillion, but only about a quarter of that is for the taxes on high earners; the rest is for tax breaks affecting those making less than $250,000 a year. Moreover, "extend tax policies" also assumes that we fix the AMT to prevent it from hitting middle-income voters. That costs another $800 billion over 10 years--about the same as the "tax cuts for the rich".
In other words, the lion's share of that money is going to the middle class, not the rich. To close the deficit, we're going to have to soak them.
The latest Budget and Economic Outlook is out from the CBO, and boy is it grim reading. The projections continue to deteriorate, largely because the recession has been longer and deeper than the CBO projected. We can now expect $1 trillion deficits even past Obama's first term.
Aha! You want to say. "It's mostly the fault of George Bush and his nefarious tax cuts for the rich!"
If only it were so simple. The ten year cost of the Bush tax cuts is $2.8 trillion, but only about a quarter of that is for the taxes on high earners; the rest is for tax breaks affecting those making less than $250,000 a year. Moreover, "extend tax policies" also assumes that we fix the AMT to prevent it from hitting middle-income voters. That costs another $800 billion over 10 years--about the same as the "tax cuts for the rich".
In other words, the lion's share of that money is going to the middle class, not the rich. To close the deficit, we're going to have to soak them.
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