Women's Stake in the Tax System: National Women's Law Center

I've talked a lot in this blog about the way economic and budgetary decisions influence the very social fabric of our democracy.  I argue against making the Bush tax cuts permanent for many different reasons (frankly, I can't think of a single convincing argument that would cut the other way), and here is a good argument against extending the Bush tax cuts from the National Women's Law Center, Tax and Budget Issues are Women's Issues: Sacrificing Women's Priorities to Make Tax Cuts for the Wealthy Few, April 2008.  (Remember, women are still losing in the national economy.  Consider the New York Times story, Women are Now Equal as Victims of Poor Economy, July 22, 2008.  For the first time since the 60s, a period of some economic recovery saw women's participation in the work force shrinking.  And it wasn't because women decided to opt to be stay-at-homes.  It was because appropriate opportunities were not there.)

The key line from this brief report is in the first paragraph: "[F]ederal tax and budget policy since 2001 has helped the very rich grow even richer, bringing inequality to record levels while sacrificing the needs of low-income women and their families."  Id.

There are some very good graphs illustrating key points, such as the extent to which the benefits of the tax cuts go to the wealthy (the top 1% would get 31% of the benefits, while the bottom 80% would get only  one quarter of the benefit of making the cuts permanent); millionaires would get an average cut of $162,000 in 2012 if the cuts are made permanent, but one quarter of single mother families got nothing from the tax cuts in 2006.  And there's this one:  if the Bush revenue reductions are made permanent, the annual amount that costs us will exceed the combined budgets of Education, Homeland Security, Housing and Urban Development, Veterans Affairs, State, Energy, and the Environmental Protection Agency.  Meanwhile, food assistance, job training, and other programs that are terribly important to helping those in the middle and lower rungs of the economic ladder make it have been shrunk.

Surely Congress can think of better ways to plan the government's budget than through a giveaway to the wealthy and a takeaway from the vast majority of American taxpayers.