Banging the drum of truth on "tax cuts for the rich"

The characterization of the Bush tax cuts as "tax cuts for the rich" is dishonest and pretty easy to debunk if one is willing to look at the facts. Mark Perry is the latest to do just that. He concludes:

Taken together, the data in these graphs challenge the rhetoric that the Bush tax cuts were “tax cuts for the rich,” by showing first that there were more Americans, both in total numbers and as a share of the total, who paid no tax after the Bush tax cuts than before. One could even argue that the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 were actually huge “tax cuts for the poor and middle class” because they helped to increase the number of “non-payers” by more than 14 million Americans between 2000 and 2007. Secondly, the tax burden on “the rich”—the top 1 percent of taxpayers—reached a record high in 2007 of more than 40 percent, and was higher after the Bush tax cuts than before.

Nothing new here, really, but the only way to cut through the nonsense is to keep banging the drum of truth. Be sure to check out the graph at the link, and note that George W. Bush did us no service when he greatly expanded the percentage of Americans who pay no income tax.