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The 7th of June marked the 10th anniversary of tax cuts enacted by President George W Bush. Over the past decade millionaires, billionaires, and major corporations have benefited greatly from the cuts and pushed to make them permanent. In fact, President Obama last December, after initially vowing to let the cuts expire, temporarily extended them. The justification from the right for the cuts is that letting them expire would hurt small businesses and thereby hurt job creation. However, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, only three percent of taxpayers that report business income of any kind actually earn enough to benefit from Bush’s tax cuts. As Republicans are gearing up for the 2012 Presidential election against Democrat Obama, they are still banking on tax cuts for the wealthy as the center piece of their economic policy. Former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty, who has announced his candidacy, gave a speech earlier in the week in Chicago where he blasted Obama’s record on the economy. Pawlenty made a proposal to decrease individual tax rates to only two levels: 10% and 25%. Currently the tax rate for top earners is 35%. The GOP Presidential candidate also called for lowering taxes on corporations.

GUEST: Chuck Collins is a senior scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) and directs IPS’s Program on Inequality and the Common Good. He co-edits the web resource, www.inequality.org, an online resource with data, analysis and commentary.

Read Chuck Collins article here: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/06/09-6