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Politics : GOPwinger Lies/Distortions/Omissions/Perversions of Truth -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: geode00 who wrote (143257)	10/25/2008 11:53:27 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 173976

Rich and poor are not formal categories, they can be defined in different ways. But there is specific information available about what percentage of the tax burden is paid by people in different percentiles in terms of income. According to IRS data 33% of those who file a return had no net income tax liability (probably mostly filing a tax to get the stimulus check and/or EITC) According to census data at least 40% of people pay no taxes, (and my understanding is that people who pay taxes, but get more back in EITC are still counted as paying taxes by this definition when there real income tax liability is zero or negative). Meanwhile "the top 5%" pay 60% of federal income tax revenue. Look at the big federal social and transfer programs. Social Security, Medicare, well some goes to the top 5%, but only a very small fraction of 60%. Medicaid and SCHIP, various welfare programs, none of that goes to the top 5%. Other large and middling large programs or departments or agencies (defense, homeland security, EPA, NASA, National Science Foundation, Judicial, legislative and office of the president budgets, Army corp of engineers, budget for the administering Social Security (which is a separate and additional $8bil or so beyond SS payments)) , aren't transfer programs. HUD and HHS are mostly targeted at the poor. Education, Justice, State, Interior, Veterans Affairs, are largely not transfer programs and to the extent they contain transfer programs those aren't targeted at the rich. What do you have that mainly goes at least to the fairly wealthy? Maybe farm price supports and SBA loans, but combined the total projected budget for Agriculture and the SBA for FY 2009 is under $22bil out of a $3.1tril budget. (Compare to Medicaid and SCHIP at $224 billion, or "Unemployment/Welfare/Other mandatory spending" (mostly not to the rich) at $360 billion.