(5/13/2005) Tax cuts for billionaires is the primary purpose and major emphasis of the George W. Bush administration. The first thing Bush did after getting elected was pass a huge unaffordable tax cut that went primarily to the richest people in America. The $600 dollar rebate checks that middle class taxpayers got back from this tax cut was forced into the legislation by Democrats. Bush lied, and continues to lie, about this tax cut when he claims that it went mostly to middle class taxpayers. This first chart shows the distribution of Bush's tax cut by income class, and if you charted the top income class by itself you would see that Bush's tax cut was geared towards billionaires and not towards middle class Americans as Bush claims.

This was Bush's first big lie as president, and he has carried on this lying habit for the past 5 years.

That first tax cut legislation was projected to cost over $1.7 trillion dollars over the next ten years, and it was only that low because the tax cuts sunset after ten years. However, since its passage George W. Bush has been spending most of this time in office trying to make those tax cuts permanent. Even now, when our government is running a $600+ billion dollar deficit, he continues to push to get this tax cut made permanent. I believe that the cost of making those tax cuts permanent is more than just dollars, but is our democracy itself.

When you allow billionaires to pass all their wealth along to their children tax free, with no estate taxes, you concentrate wealth, power, and opportunity into the hands of fewer and fewer people. Eventually we will end up with a few families owning everything in America. If that happens, and the Republicans in Congress are working overtime to make sure it does happen, opportunities for middle class people to create new wealth for themselves and their families, or to move up the economic ladder, will become almost impossible.

Our founding fathers created a democracy in America after seeing the inequity and economic stagnation of the monarchies and religious dominated governments in Europe. They recognized the importance of preventing wealth from becoming concentrated into the hands of a few people so they created a highly progressive tax system that included a highly progressive estate tax. As a result of these thoughtful actions America has had, and still has, the largest and most dynamic economy in the world.

Thanks to our forefather's wisdom the Robber Barons, who were a small group of America's most successful capitalist, were forced to choose between paying a lot of estates taxes to the government or giving a lot of their money away to charities. It turns out that they did both and our society and democracy is alive and thriving because of it.

The growth of the middle class in America is a direct result of our highly progressive tax system. The American economy is healthy, vibrant, dynamic, and resilient because of it. However, Bush and the GOP have successfully changed the tax system to a regressive one. The current sluggishness of our economy is reflecting that change from progressive to regressive. We also witnessed this same sluggishness when Reagan passed his huge tax cut legislation that made our tax system regressive.

Bush has reversed Clinton's progressive tax changes and the result is huge unsustainable budget deficits, a slowing economy, a declining dollar, a lower standard of living, higher unemployment, rising interest rates, and inflationary pressures. Our economy is being keep afloat on a mountain of new debt while the real strength of our economy is being drained away by enormous trade deficits and a regressive tax system.

We are now in a situation where billionaires are paying a lower percentage of their incomes in taxes than people in the middle class. Not only is this unfair but it is also very unhealthy for our democracy. Our democracy is being transformed into a plutocracy and the American people did not vote for that change.

Bush and the GOP are now proposing to make our tax system even more regressive with more cuts in the top rates. They are also suggesting a complete overhaul of our tax system with a consumption tax system, or a flat tax. Both of these proposals would shift the tax burden directly onto the backs of middle class taxpayers and off the backs of billionaires.

If Bush's gigantic budget deficits force our government into bankruptcy the wealth of America will quickly become concentrated into the hands of a few super rich people. These people will then use their wealthy, power, and opportunity to avoid paying any taxes and the tax burden will be completely shifted onto average middle class workers and the middle class will not survive very long in that situation.

These regressive tax policies expose the fact that Bush and the GOP are only representing the interest of billionaires, and no one else. The sooner the American people realize this fact the sooner we can hold these lying pigs accountable for their anti-democracy, anti-government conspiracy.