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10/16/04 FactChecking FactCheck.org FactCheck.org purports to be a non-partisan, unbiased source of fact-checking. Usually they are pretty good about being balanced, but occasionally their contributors fall into the same liberal traps the media in general lays for the people at large. Recently in critiquing some of President George W. Bush's claims about his tax cuts they have adopted the pervasively biased perspective of the media and liberal elites. In its report on the most recent Presidential debate, FactCheck.org asserts that Bush distorted the truth with one of his responses: "He talks about middle-class tax cuts. That's exactly where the tax cuts went. Most of the tax cuts went to low- and middle-income Americans. And now the tax code is more fair. Twenty percent of the upper-income people pay about 80 percent of the taxes in America today because of how we structured the tax cuts" (emphasis added by FactCheck.org). FactCheck writes, in disputing Bush's characterizations: "...the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center recently calculated that most of the tax cuts -- 53% to be exact -- went to the highest -earning 10% of US individuals and families. Those most affluent Americans got an average tax cut of $7,661. "And as for the 'low- and middle-income Americans' Bush mentioned -- the bottom 60% of individuals and families got only 13.7% of the tax cuts, according to the Tax Policy Center, a far cry from 'most' of the cuts as claimed by Bush." The analysis they rely on calculates only the absolute dollar value of the tax cuts, which is certainly not the only, and is hardly the best, measure of the actual impact of the cuts. Those in the highest brackets pay huge amounts of money in taxes, so small percentage cuts in their taxes will result in relatively huge cuts as measured in dollars. If that is what Bush meant, it would be accurate to say that he had distorted the truth. But that is clearly not what Bush meant. What Bush meant is clearly indicated by the entire context of his answer. He means that, as a share of the total tax burden, the middle class got a larger cut. And he is right about that. A look at the recent report by the Congressional Budget Office on the impact of the tax cuts shows that the lower three quintiles (the "bottom 60%" referred to by FactCheck.org) each have a lower burden of federal income taxes than they would have under the law prior to the cuts enacted under Bush's leadership. The second quintile (20%) from the top paid essentially the same total share, and the top quintile (20%) paid a greater share of the federal income tax burden in 2004 than they would have under the old law. And the upper quintile (20%) pays about 80% of the total federal income tax burden, as Bush said. FactCheck.org calls this a distortion because Bush didn't specify that he was speaking of income taxes only, but since we were talking about cuts to income taxes only (other federal taxes were not cut), it is churlish not to give him the benefit of the doubt. In this case, FactCheck.org was probably trying too hard to be balanced. Kerry committed so many serious distortions that they didn't want to seem to be ganging up on him. But if they want to maintain their credibility, they have to be fair in terms of quality, not in terms of quantity. Bush's claims are not a distortion of the truth, they represent a reasonable construction of the truth. FactCheck.org should acknowledge as much. Modified: 10/19/2004 |
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