George W. Bush's tax cuts may hurt him more politically

[cal04]

President George W. Bush's tax cuts may hurt him more politically than they have helped economically after a Congressional report Friday showed his policies favor the rich. Bush is heading into the Nov. 2 election with a net loss of 1.1 million jobs during his first term. Attacks by Democratic challenger John Kerry that Bush's tax cuts failed to help the ``average person'' enough were reinforced by a Congressional Budget Office study that said more of the national tax burden shifted to the middle class from the wealthiest Americans.

Tax cuts ``should have been focused on the middle class, which has a much higher propensity to spend,'' said Robert Crandall, a retired chief executive of Fort Worth, Texas-based AMR Corp.'s American Airlines. Crandall, 68, said he switched his support to Kerry from Bush in part because the tax policy favored the rich.

The Congressional Budget Office showed that a third of the benefit of Bush's $1.7 trillion in tax cuts went to the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans. The richest 20 percent of taxpayers will reduce their share of national taxes in the next decade to 62.8 percent from 64.4 percent in 2001, while the tax burden will increase for 80 percent of Americans, according to the report.

`Paycheck to Paycheck'

The analysis stoked the debate over the fairness and economic impact of Bush's tax policies. ``Every American who pays federal income taxes benefited from the Bush tax cuts -- and so has our economy,'' Vice President Dick Cheney said at a campaign rally in Elko, Nevada, Saturday.``Tax cuts have the biggest effect on those who live from paycheck to paycheck, because they're most inclined to spend what they get,'' said William Dudley, chief U.S. economist at Goldman, Sachs & Co. in New York. ``There's no question it would have provided more bang-for-the-buck if the president had designed his proposal to provide more for middle- and low-income families.''

http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000087&sid=aLH7T0AwUulk&refer=home

[Wright Patman]

1. Who cares what you think?

That is *'s answer to anyone questioning his policies.

Plus, he inherited his fortune fair and square. How dare you now suggest it be taxed?

And we all know the real "biggest bang for the buck" comes from the development of new bunker-busting, cave-collapsing mininukes. So that's where all the middle class money is going to go from now on--to expand our military budget to where it is not merely more annually than the next 20 countries below us on the list, but to where it is more than every other country on earth combined.