About
	Contact Us
	Articles
	Topic Index
	Reports
	Quotes
	On the Web
	Links
	TW Tracker
	Support

Tax Cuts

• September 24 -- Trumpeting Possible Deficits Over Definite Tax Relief
Edmund Andrews again emphasizes possible deficits over definite middle-class tax relief: "The Republican-controlled Congress easily passed legislation on Thursday that would extend expiring provisions of last year's tax cuts for families as well as about 20 business tax cuts, at a cost of about $146 billion over 10 years."

• September 23 -- Playing Up Deficits, Not Tax Relief
Edmund Andrews' front-page "Deal In Congress To Keep Tax Cuts, Widening Deficit" paints a tax-cut extension in grim terms.

• May 10 -- Bush's Tax Cuts Killing Social Programs?
A Times editorial states: "The Bush administration's tax cuts for the well-to-do have taken a heavy toll on the nation's most important social programs for the poor and working class."

• March 31 -- An "Embarrassing" Win for Bush Tax Cuts
Poor Bush. Even when he wins, he loses. Yesterday Bush notched another "embarrassing" win, according to Richard Oppel: "House Republican leaders avoided an embarrassing setback on Tuesday, barely defeating a nonbinding resolution favoring new restrictions on future tax cuts that are the centerpiece of President Bush's economic program."

• February 17 -- Bush's Costly Tax Cuts
David Sanger helpfully reminds readers of the deficit and pins it on Bush's tax cuts: "Mr. Bush said nothing of the long-term cost of making those cuts permanent. Neither the White House nor many in Congress want to dwell on additions to a deficit projected to hit $500 billion this year."

• February 2 -- The Republican's "Shameful Coalition"
Columnist Thomas Friedman take on the 2004 campaign is chock full of "libertarian nuts" and other limited-government flakes.

• January 28 -- Bush "Taking Away Civil Liberties"
A Times editorial cries wolf over the Patriot Act and takes an unlikely shot against Bush's tax cuts: "There are better ways to make the country safe….But the money to do such things is in short supply after the president's tax cuts. Taking away civil liberties may not expand Mr. Bush's gaping budget deficit, but its price in lost freedom is more than we can afford."

• January 5 -- "Aversion to Taxes" Hurting States
John Broder hints that voters' refusal to embrace tax hikes are hurting vital programs: "Voters roundly rejected the [Alabama] tax increase in the fall, and now cuts have begun. Five thousand nonviolent offenders are being paroled early from prisons, troopers have gone to a four-day workweek, and schools have run out of money for textbooks and computers."

• December 1 -- Uchitelle's Hard-to-Tell Take on Consumer Spending
It's clear economics reporter Louis Uchitelle thinks Bush's tax cuts will backfire. But Times Watch is still trying to figure out his take on consumer spending.

• November 10 -- “Apocalypse Pretty Soon,” Starring Undertaxed California
Brent Staples finds a villain more terrifying than any movie monster--Proposition 13, the 1978 California ballot initiative that capped property taxes.

• November 7 -- Ignorant Mississippians for Bush
Paul Krugman accuses Republicans of racial tactics: "White Mississippi voters, unlike their counterparts up north, are still responding to Republican flag-waving--and it's not just the American flag that's being waved."

• November 4 -- More on Bush's Terrible Tax Cuts
David Leonhardt spells out the problems a surging economy poses for Democratic candidates, but then blames the deficit on Bush's tax cuts.

• September 17 -- Fanatical Tax-Cutters of the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy
“The Tax-Cut Con,” columnist Paul Krugman’s 7,000 word piece for the Sunday magazine, is a history of the modern-day tax-cutting movement as seen from Krugman’s skewed-to-the-left perspective: The advocates of tax cuts are relentless, even fanatical….Loosely speaking, that is, supply-siders work for the vast right-wing conspiracy.”

• August 4 -- The Times’ New Favorite “Republican”
A self-described Republican critical of Bush’s tax cuts, Michael Retzer is so popular with Times reporter Elisabeth Bumiller she used his same quote twice in two stories that ran five days apart.

• July 31 -- Our Incoherent President
A Times editorial argues: “Bush should have been able to come up with better responses to two big and obvious questions: why he ordered the invasion of Iraq and why he pushed for tax cuts that have left the nation sinking into a hopeless quagmire of debt.” That’s before it lambastes “Mr. Bush’s vague and sometimes nearly incoherent answers.”

• July 17 -- Tax Cuts Cause Deficits, But Medicare Spending Doesn’t?
David Rosenbaum’s front-page story is headlined: “White House Sees A $455 Billion Gap In The ’03 Budget -- Would Be Biggest U.S. Deficit -- Democrats Point to Tax Cuts.” Why not “Conservatives Point to Medicare Drug Spending?”

• July 2 -- The Times’ Tax-Hike Crusade Trickles Down
The Times’ tax-hike crusade trickles down to the states, as the myth of falling tax revenues in Oregon resurfaces in a story on state budget woes.

• June 23 -- Rosenbaum’s Weapons of Tax Deception
Reporter David Rosenbaum spreads more misinformation on who benefits from Bush’s tax cut.

• June 20 -- David Firestone’s Religious Devotion to the Left
Reporter David Firestone’s story on the National Council of Churches’ response to Bush’s tax cuts shows the Times’ fear of the “religious right” is matched only by its fealty to the religious left.

• June 19 -- GOP Draining Government of Its Lifeblood
Reporter David Firestone’s article on the House voting to end the estate tax leaves no doubt where he stands: “…the third time in a month that Republicans have approved a large tax-cut bill over objections from Democrats that the government is being deprived of its lifeblood.”

• June 11 -- “Compassion,” Conservatism Don’t Mix
Two Times tax stories let readers know “compassion” and “conservatism” are mutually exclusive.

• June 11 -- Friedman Pulls A Krugman
Columnist Thomas Friedman ventures into Paul Krugman territory in an assault on Bush’s tax cuts.

• June 2 -- Today’s Top Tax Story: A Liberal Press Release
David Firestone again files a front-page story on Bush’s tax cuts dictated by a liberal think tank.

• June 2 -- Sen. Grassley’s Suspiciously Good Press
On the heels of a Times story in which Sen. Grassley promises to propose legislation to make Bush’s tax cut more palatable to the Times, the paper issues a favorable profile of…Sen. Grassley.

• May 29 -- Oh Those Terrible Tax Cuts
Richard Stevenson’s story on Bush’s tax cut opens: “President Bush signed into law today the third tax cut in three years, dismissing criticism of the legislation's cost, fairness and effectiveness, while casting the measure as ‘essential action to strengthen the American economy.’”

• May 27 -- The Krugman Crack-Up
Conspiracy-mongering columnist Paul Krugman accuses the Bush administration of being out to wreck the American economy: “The people now running America aren't conservatives: they're radicals who want to do away with the social and economic system we have, and the fiscal crisis they are concocting may give them the excuse they need.”

• May 23 -- Oh No, Not Another Tax Cut!
The bias in David Rosenbuam’s tax-cut story starts with the headline “A Tax Cut Without End” and concludes with a sentence on Bush’s tax-cut enthusiasm: “So be prepared for another tax bill next year.” Another tax cut? Oh, the horror.

• May 16 -- Bush Policy “Did the Terrorists a Favor”
Much-criticized columnist Paul Krugman has stopped talking down Bush’s tax plan in order to bash Bush’s terrorism strategy—with about equal effectiveness.

• May 13 -- Firestone’s Tiresome Anti-Tax Tirade
Reporter David Firestone again takes a liberal assumption as proven fact, writing that Democrats are demonstrating “their refusal to make it easy for the Republicans to increase the deficit with their tax cut.”

• May 12 -- Karl Rove’s “October Surprise”?
Dredging up the “October Surprise” canard, editorial writer Francis Clines suggests the 2004 Bush campaign may purposely heighten terrorism fears for the sake of reelection.

• May 5 -- The Times Snowe Job
The Times PR drive for Republicans opposing Bush’s tax cut continues with a front-page story on “deficit hawk and fiscal conservative” Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe. But is she really?

• May 5 -- Ralph Waldo Emerson, Republican Kid-Killer
What would the Transcendentalist think of Bush’s tax-cut plan?

• April 28 -- The Iraq Tax War?
Times reporter David Rosenbaum: “In a speech on April 15, [Bush] declared that ‘our victory in Iraq is certain, but it is not complete,’ referring to his tax plan.” Huh?

• April 25 -- Krugman’s Persecution Complex
Columnist Krugman: “Claiming that those who don't support tax cuts are somehow unpatriotic is not an answer.” Who’s he talking about?

• April 22 -- Pain in Maine If Tax Cuts Reign
Reporter-turned-editorialist Francis X. Clines accuses “administration zealots” of “trickle-down conceits” and “tax-cut triumphalism.” And those are the nice parts.

• April 16 -- Three Jeers For Tax Cuts!
Bush lowered his tax cut and was greeted with the sort of front-page enthusiasm the Times could never quite muster over Iraq’s liberation.

• March 26 -- Times Uses “Fog Of War” To Fight Tax Cuts
Yesterday’s Times lambastes “Republican’s shameful use of the fog of war in their budget scheming”—Times code for tax cuts. But today the paper is quite pleased Senate Democrats used the war as an excuse to trim Bush’s tax cut proposal: “Only today, after the cost of the war became evident in lives and dollars, did they successfully turn a popular president's war against him.”

• March 24 -- Pleading Democrats Try To Halt Record Republican Deficits
Times reporters Carl Hulse and David Firestone implied it was unseemly for Congressional Republicans to promote Republican legislation during wartime. “Though Democrats pleaded for a halt after the war began, the Republican leaders of the House and Senate chose not to stop their march toward tax cuts and record deficits…”