Bush's tax cuts for high earners "have been the biggest contributor to the budget deficit."
Nancy Pelosi on Thursday, January 8th, 2009 in during a news conference

Condensed story from 2009 Pulitzer prize winner, Politifact.com Click here for Full Story.

Tax cuts for rich not biggest deficit factor

The Tax Policy Center calculated what share of the federal tax changes each income bracket gained from the Bush tax cuts. The top 5 percent of earners (those making about $225,000 or more) received 30.5 percent of the tax benefits in 2008, according to their analysis. But conversely, the bottom 95 percent of tax payers got 70 percent. Zoom out from the top 5 percent to the top 20 percent, and their share is 47.8 percent. Critics of the Bush tax cuts can call that disproportionate, but it's still less than half and therefore not "the biggest."

All of this indicates that Pelosi is mistaken. Although the wealthy did get big benefits from the Bush tax cuts, their benefits did not outweigh those of everyone else put together.

Certainly tax cuts for high earners have increased the deficit. Pelosi might have made a more convincing case if she had said high earners received a disproportionate benefit from the Bush tax cuts.

But Pelosi said tax cuts for "the high end" were the "biggest" contributor to the federal deficit. Looking at the numbers from a bunch of different angles and found no evidence that tax cuts for the wealthy are larger than those of everyone else combined. In fact, all the numbers we looked at showed that tax cuts for middle and lower incomes represent a bigger slice of the overall revenue pie. The evidence directly contradicts her.


So Nancy Pelosi --- Are you Kidding?