Thursday night, ABC, CBS, NBC and CNBC all decided to subtly berate President Bush’s upcoming economic stimulus package, which will include tax cuts. From the Media Research Center:
ABC anchor Elizabeth Vargas worried: “President Bush will roll out more tax cuts, but will they benefit everyone?” On CBS, Bill Plante noted how President Bush “brushed aside the debate over whether his tax policy favors the rich” and that Bush’s tax cut package set to be unveiled on Tuesday will “very likely” include “the very top tax rate despite the criticism that that will disproportionately benefit the wealthiest taxpayers.” CNBC anchor Forrest Sawyer intoned that it’s “a package that critics are already saying is not enough and helps the wrong people.” NBC’s David Gregory noted how Bush insists his tax cuts “are not simply a giveaway to the rich.” NBC’s Tom Brokaw stated that President Bush insisted his “plan to fix a struggling economy” will “help all Americans–not just the wealthy.”
To the blowhard talking heads and other tax-and-spend leftists: it’s very hard to give tax breaks to people who are paying very little, if any, taxes. What the talking heads fail to mention is that from the IRS’s own records, we learn that in 2000, the bottom 50 percent of wage-earning Americans, those earning less than $27,682 annually, paid under 4 percent of the taxes. They paid 3.91 percent of the federal tax burden, to be exact. These are the people that need a tax break?
Contrast that with the top 5 percent of wage earners ($128,336), which paid 56.47 percent! And the top 50 percent of wage earners in the country paid the 96.09 percent that the bottom 50 didn’t, and still doesn’t, have to come up with.
To the point, half of the wage earners in this country pay nearly all the federal taxes, while the other half pays next to nothing.
So the economic lesson for today, boys and girls, is that if you’re poor in America, you’re paying very little, if any, federal taxes, and any proposed tax cuts are not going to impact you negatively. Therefore, talking heads need to stop instigating class warfare and shut their traps.
