In case you missed it (I sure did), the Detroit News ran a great series a few weeks ago detailing the ways in which the working poor suffer under Bush’s tax cuts. It’s a devastating indictment, accompanied by some helpful charts (and I do love good charts).
Here are a couple of choice tidbits that jumped out at me:
* The poorest 20 percent of workers, who earn on average $16,600 annually, will get a tax break of $250 this year, which is less than 2 percent of their income. That amounts to about 68 cents a day. By comparison, the richest 1 percent, with average incomes topping $1.1 million, will receive $78,460 in tax cuts this year. That is nearly 7 percent of their income.
* [T]he Bush tax breaks for the richest 10 percent this year alone will total $148 billion. That is twice as much as the government will spend on job training, $6.2 billion; college Pell grants, $12 billion; public housing, $6.3 billion; low-income rental subsidies, $19 billion; child care, $4.8 billion; insurance for low-income children, $5.2 billion; low-income energy assistance, $1.8 billion; meals for shut-ins, $180 million; and welfare, $16.9 billion.
The reduction in government assistance that accompanied the tax cuts couldn’t come at a worse time. The number of Americans living in poverty has risen 10 percent since 2000, after falling in the late 1990s. Nearly 36 million Americans — one in eight — now live in poverty and tens of millions more are considered working poor.
Bush has his priorities; are they yours?