Your Weekly Rush

If you go to rush's website he has an area which is constant. Entitled "Only the Rich Pay Taxes," it gives the "fact" that the top 50% of wage earners pay 96.9% of the taxes. According to Rush, "This nukes the liberal lie that the rich don't pay taxes." Of course no liberal outside of a mental institution would argue that the rich don't pay taxes--what they argue is that the rich find numerous ways to pay less taxes.

This is part of an ongoing effort on the part of the Bush administration and other Conservatives to realign our tax code so that the wealthy pay less and the poor pay more. Of course these numbers are not a complete picture of what the government takes from it's citizens. For example there is no mention of Sales Tax or Payroll Taxes (i.e. Social Security), which hit the poor and middle class to a much greater extent than they do the wealthy.

Rush and others are also quick to point out that the rich paid more taxes after the Clinton years than before. Of course the only possible answer is that Clinton raised enormous new taxes on the rich--the fact that the rich generally got richer doesn't play into it.

Another side note to future attempts to shift the tax burden from the rich to the poor is that it will probably go hand in foot with efforts to cut government services.

Another side note, Rush states, "The top 50% were those individuals or couples filing jointly who earned $26,000 and up in 1999." So in effect 50% of the wage earners in the United States are earning under $26,000. That's a happy thought. It's a good thing that conservatives have banned all talk of class or I might stress you out with comments about how the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer.

For those who belong to the Salon.com website, there is a much more indepth report on this argument, which has also appeared in the Wall Street Journal. It's on the pay side though.