Barack Obama (and, to be fair, Democrats in general) keeps saying that those George Bush tax cuts benefited mostly those evil rich folks. And if he gets in, he's going to finance his host of new programs by increasing their share of the burden and decreasing everybody else's. But look at the numbers:
The nearby chart shows that the top 1% of taxpayers, those who earn above $388,806, paid 40% of all income taxes in 2006, the highest share in at least 40 years. The top 10% in income, those earning more than $108,904, paid 71%. Barack Obama says he's going to cut taxes for those at the bottom, but that's also going to be a challenge because Americans with an income below the median paid a record low 2.9% of all income taxes, while the top 50% paid 97.1%. Perhaps he thinks half the country should pay all the taxes to support the other half.
[. . .]
The idea that this has been a giveaway to the rich is a figment of the left's imagination. Taxes paid by millionaire households more than doubled to $274 billion in 2006 from $136 billion in 2003. No President has ever plied more money from the rich than George W. Bush did with his 2003 tax cuts.
And just so you don't think I only care when Democrats get stupid about money, here (from National Reivew, of all places) is something about overspeding by Republicans in the last eight years:
Under Ronald Reagan, non-defense discretionary spending grew at an annual rate of 2.6%, about the rate of inflation. Under George W. Bush, it has grown at an annual rate of 6.2%
