Sure the Middle Class Will Benefit from Tax Cuts

From Atrios:

Lying like a rug on the tax cuts

David Rosenbaum of The Newspaper of Record (when they axe Lelyveld, that is) has a great headline:

Bush May Have Exaggerated, but Did He Lie?

My goodness gracious, are such things possible?!

What is more important is that the tax relief most people will receive is quite meager, hardly the impression the president sought to leave when he campaigned around the country for the plan.

Mr. Bush kept emphasizing the tax benefits for people with modest incomes, not the more extensive tax relief he wanted for the well heeled. He often had onstage with him a couple with two children and an income of $40,000 or $50,000 whose taxes would be cut by more than $1,000, mostly because of the increase in the child tax credit.

But the indisputable fact is that the bulk of the tax cut will go to the wealthy. A study by Citizens for Tax Justice, a liberal research institute whose calculations have gone unchallenged, found that half of all taxpayers would get a cut of less than $100 a year this year and that by 2005, three-quarters would get less than $100.

On the other hand, almost two-thirds of all the tax savings will go to the wealthiest 10 percent of taxpayers, and the richest 1 percent will get an average tax reduction of nearly $100,000 a year.

I don’t think these guys even know when they’re lying any more. They just say whatever it takes.

It would be nice to have a President who at least knew what the truth was.