One frequently cited reason for the Democrats' uninspired response to George W. Bush's $1.6 trillion tax cut plan is that they're no longer privy to the White House's staff of number crunchers. There once was a time, under President Clinton, when these tax wizards worked on behalf of Democrats.
They'd run the numbers for the latest Republican tax scheme and discover that, say, Dick Armey's proposal to abolish the tax on Lear Jets primarily benefited the rich. Armed with facts and figures like these, Democrats could keep most Republican excesses in check. But with Bush in the White House, that's no longer an option. Democrats can still complain about the unfairness of Bush's cut, but they can't throw around the kind of numbers they once could to demonstrate why it's a lousy idea.
Fortunately, I can.
Like most working Americans, I recently received my W-2 form in the mail. And like most, I flinched when I saw how little I'd earned last year. Then I wondered how I would have faired under Bush's tax cut. Raiding Social Security and Medicare to pay for a cut goes against my liberal instincts, of course. But if ever there was a time when I might be seduced by that "tax cut for every working American" bit, it was now, during tax season. Besides, the $1,600 figure Bush is tossing around sounded pretty good to me. I decided to find out exactly what my tax cut would be.
I've often wondered whether my political leanings were all that stood between me and untold riches. And I was about to find out. But I figured my fiscal experiment would also be a service to the great many Americans who are just like me -- that is, folks who haven't been pre-screened by the Bush team to qualify for every imaginable deduction.
Like many Americans, I'm in my twenties, I'm single, and I have no dependents. I do have a mountain of student loan debt and a criminally low writer's salary of $25,000 a year. I also have no clue how large a tax cut I stand to receive under Bush or even how I'd go about figuring it out. (I learned in high school that numbers aren't my friends.) Last year, when I did my taxes, I opted only for the standard deduction and another (enactedunder Clinton) that allows me to deduct the interest on my student loans. Lacking a team of White House tax gurus, an accountant, or even the basic mathematical skills to process the figures on my own, I turned instead to the Bush Tax Estimator, a nifty feature on Quicken.com's website that allows you to enter your basic tax information and calculates the precise dollar amount you would have saved if Bush's tax cut plan had been in effect last year.
My Bush tax cut bounty? Three hundred dollars. In fact, if you assume that Al Gore also would have cut taxes (he pledged a more moderate $500 billion tax cut), the money I save by having Bush in the White House is significantly less than that. As near as I can determine, the figure is less than $200 -- somewhere in the neighborhood of a fancy date, but not even enough to cover my student loan payment for a month. (If I had no loans and made $100,000, I'd save $3,075, and if I earned $1,000,000, I'd save $56,619. Furthermore, my salary would have to triple in order to get the "average American" $1,600 cut. But who's counting.)
Everyone has his or her price, of course, but that's not nearly enough to convince me to sign on to the plan. But don't take my word for it. Do your own research and call your member of Congress. They could all use the help.