In the last fifty years, the tax cuts for the rich have created an increasing disparity between the rich and the poor. By the time President George W. Bush took office, the tax rate for those making over $400,000 stood at an unbalanced 35 percent–a nearly 60 percent difference from the rates under Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower. In other terms, those same people paid 55 percent in income tax then, and are now paying 16.1 percent today. The new findings are reported from the Wealth for Common Good, a group promoting fair taxation.
On The Ed Show, host Ed Schultz graphs the findings and turns to Nation Editor Katrina vanden Heuvel, who recently wrote on the topic. "If we want a truly secure country and really want to look hard at what the real problem is with debt and deficits, we need to start pulling back some of the money from the very richest, " she says. Vanden Heuvel says we should roll back the Bush tax cuts in the name of fairness. On April 15, when Tea Partiers rally outside the White House, vanden Heuvel says we should turn to cold, clear-eyed facts–corporations did not pay income tax from 1995 to 2008, and, in fact, Obama has given 95 percent of Americans tax cuts (see TheOther95.com).
–Clarissa Leon
