On the recordJune 17, 2010
The expiring tax relief I am talking about today includes the marginal rate cuts and family tax relief. Under the statutory pay as you go, the amount permitted in this area is about $1.4 trillion as you can see at the top of the chart on the right. It covers about 80 percent of extending all of the marginal rate cuts and family tax relief from the 2001 and 2003 bipartisan plan. That number makes sense because the bipartisan tax relief plans cut taxes for virtually every American family who pays income tax. How significant and how widespread is this tax relief? This chart here, drawn by the Congressional Budget Office--and I want to remind people throughout the Nation that CBO is a professional group of people who see numbers as what they are, void of politics, and make predictions. So I hope this may shed some light on the question of how significant and widespread is the tax relief. The line measures the effective tax rate paid by the top 5 percent of the taxpayers. That is at the top, the top line. This group roughly represents those taxpaying families with incomes over $250,000. Under the Democratic leadership's budget, this line will go back up to where it was in the year 2000. That is also where the President's budget, meaning President Obama's budget, and the statutory pay-as-you-go regime would take the rates. The Republicans believe this significant tax increase will be a mistake.…





