Time for the last article in this short series of election posts. Don’t worry, there will be other election series in the future, but I want my next article to be on something different and more interesting (if only the popular media would be so varied!).

The Kerry camp has misreported a Congressional Budget Office report. This report can be found here, with some rather nice graphs, which I’ll explain.
The first graph shows the tax rate for each income group. The lowest 20% and (after Bush’s tax cut) 21-40% actually get money from the IRS because of refundable tax credits. The difference column is simply “Bush tax cuts” minus “2000 law”. This graph shows that taxes went down for everyone.
The second graph shows how much each group pays of the overall income tax. Again, the lowest two brackets actually cost the government on tax day, while the middle 20% of the US is responsible for 5.4% of the total income tax. That middle 20% saw their burden drop by 1%, due to Bush’s tax cuts. The next group, the 61% to 80%, saw their burden drop by .1%. The top 20% are responsible for 3.8% more than they were in 2000, and now cover 82.1% of the entire income tax.

What does all this mean? It means that the “middle class”, or anyone not a member of the nations top 20%, pays a proportionately smaller amount in taxes than do the richest 20%. In other words, Bush’s tax cuts are more “progressive” than “rich-friendly”.

There isn’t much that I can say which Donald Luskin hasn’t already. Also, kudos to Glenn Reynolds of www.instapundit.com, from whom I found this story.