A recently released AFL-CIO report (
http://www.aflcio.org/bushwatch)on the Bush administration's record titled "Bush Watch" shows the White House occupant to be a dismal failure as well as decidedly anti-working-class. Not a big surprise, right? Let's look at the record.
First and most systemic was the nearly $2 trillion in tax cuts Bush called
for and pushed through. The effect was the elimination of the existing
budget surplus and the creation of very large deficits. While the richest
people benefited at an average of about $123,000, the rest of us raked in
just about $647 in crumbs. (This tax cut for the average household is less
than the amount the Census Bureau says the median wage fell in 2002.
Compared to Bush's personal "tax relief" of $42,000, this $647 doesn't
seem like much does it?)
While the rest of us are wondering what happened to all of that money, the
breakdown of who gets what is startling. The AFL-CIO report shows that
"the group with annual incomes of more than $1 million - about 226,000 tax filers in 2003 - would receive roughly as much as the 120 million tax
filers with annual incomes less than $100,000."
The inequality by wealth embedded in the Bush tax policy is clear, but not
so clear are the repercussions we face on a social level. With huge tax
cuts came demands for cuts in spending - not in spending on military
equipment - but for things like healthcare, schools, roads, transportation, environmental protection, safety and other social spending millions of Americans have up to this point taken for granted. As a result state budgets have been gutted by as much as $29 billion in 2004 and public employees in 21 states have been forced out of work
http://www.countercurrents.org/us-wendland100604.htm