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So when a former housekeeper testified at the queen's trial that Leona Helmsley once told her that "only the little people pay taxes," something snapped. It was as though the decade had been unmasked for what it was: an era of individual rapaciousness, backed in good part by government itself.
How could we know that two decades later that sound bite of selfishness -- "only the little people pay taxes" -- would become public policy?
Recalling Helmsley has jogged another memory. It is of Vice President Dick Cheney, speaking to then-Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill after the 2002 midterm elections. According to Ron Suskind's 2004 book, "The Price of Loyalty," O'Neill wanted the White House to abandon its plan for a second round of big tax cuts. The federal deficit already was rising, the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, necessitated enormous new expenditures for security, and the war in Afghanistan created another big demand for funds. But, Cheney told O'Neill dismissively: "We won the midterms. This is our due."
So the second installment went forward, part of a tax-cut tab from the still- unfinished Bush era that amounts to a 10-year, $2 trillion drain on the public treasury. By any measure, the cuts flow disproportionately not to the "little people" but to those who already are living large.
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