Letter: Tax cuts given to the wrong people

Tuesday, Oct. 5, 2004 | 9:13 a.m.

As usual, President Bush and his GOP-controlled government have lied to us. This time it is the "extended middle class tax cut."

An analysis from the Urban Institute-Brookings Tax Policy Center shows that the middle 20 percent of earners will receive an average tax cut of $162 in 2005, while the top fifth of earners will get an average tax gift of $1,317, which means that that privileged group shall receive two-thirds of all the tax benefits.

Insidiously, the bill quietly excluded a provision that would have extended the child tax credit to 4 million low-income families who, under the GOP bill, do not qualify. The extension of this benefit to those poor people would have cost $4 billion, but the conservatives stealthily added $12 billion in tax cuts for corporations, many of which are in the process of out-sourcing jobs offshore.

Shame on my fellow Democrats for getting snookered by the Republicans over and over again.

JAMES J. POUPARD

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