99 Percent of Alaskans Lose Money From “Tax Cutsâ€
7 July 2006For every dollar we get in a tax cut, we are burdened with over $3 dollars of new debt. A new report jointly released by the Alaska Center for Public Policy and by Citizens for Tax Justice (CTJ) finds that the “borrow-and-spend” fiscal policies of the Bush administration have saddled most Alaskans with a debt burden that far exceeds the value of the meager tax cuts we have received since 2001.
The report includes new estimates of how the Bush tax cuts affect Alaskans at different income levels between 2001 and 2006. But the report also shows that because every penny of the Bush administration’s tax cuts has been paid for with borrowed money—which ultimately must be paid by taxpayers through tax hikes or spending cuts— the bottom line for middle-income Alaskans is that a six-year cumulative tax cut averaging $2,528 per family member will be funded by borrowing that costs the same middle-income person $9,304.
In fact, when both the direct tax cuts and indirect debt hikes are accounted for side by side, only the wealthiest 1 percent of Alaskans are left better off as a result of the Bush fiscal policies. For this lucky group, a total six-year tax cut averaging $51,130 per person outweighs a debt burden of $34,139.
The other 99 percent of Alaskans receive a total six-year tax break averaging $3,157 per person but also face a added debt burden of $9,872.
Nearly every family in Alaska loses money under the President’s policies. This means that for every dollar we get in a tax cut, we are burdened with over $3 dollars of new debt. This is public policy at its worst, and it is a terrible financial burden to leave our children and other young Alaskans.
“This report shows what most of us already knew: that there’s no such thing as a free lunch. Low- and middle-income Alaskans are paying for the huge tax cuts going to the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans,” said Citizens for Tax Justice Director Robert S. McIntyre.
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