Senator Clinton's Facts

The Washington Times today has provided a correction to several incorrect assertions Senator Clinton made in a rare Fox News interview. One is given below.

Mrs. Clinton complained in the interview about "huge tax cuts" that are "shifting the tax burden rather dramatically away from those of us who are most able to bear it to the middle class." Again, she got it wrong.
Among other things, the 2001 and 2003 individual income-tax cuts doubled the child tax credit from $500 to $1,000; added the 10 percent tax bracket (chopping the income taxes of married couples and singles by $700 and $350, respectively); virtually eliminated the marriage penalty, saving tens of millions of married couples an average of about $1,500 per year; and reduced the quintessentially middle-class marginal income-tax bracket from 28 percent to 25 percent. Contrary to Mrs. Clinton's assertion, according to an August analysis by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, in 2004 the share of individual income-tax liabilities of the second quintile (representing 21 to 40 percent of the household-income stream) will fall from 1.5 percent under 2000 tax laws to -0.1 percent under current tax laws. The comparable income-tax share of the third quintile (41 percent to 60 percent of the household-income stream) will fall from 6.4 percent to 5.4 percent. For the fourth quintile (61 percent to 80 percent), the income-tax share will fall from 15.3 percent to 15.2 percent. On the other hand, the income-tax share of the top 10 percent of the income stream will increase from 63.5 percent under 2000 tax law to 66.7 percent in 2004, following the 2001 and 2003 income-tax cuts.