$2,480,000,000: What Does That Number Have To Do With Healthcare?

Where did almost $ 2.5 trillion dollars go from the U.S. government? Well a healthy portion of the money went to the wealthiest in our nation.

Citizens for Tax Justice, a Washington based research group, has just released a study that shows the Bush Tax Cuts of 2001 and 2003 have cost the U.S. government more than what the Democrats’ healthcare reform is to cost.

The study concludes that over the ten year period of the tax cuts, the total cost of the tax cuts to the U.S. government is estimated at approximately 2.48 trillion dollars. It is 2.1 trillion dollars if you do not include the additional interest payments on the national debt made necessary by the deficit-financed cuts. Based on the Congressional Budget Office’s estimations of the Democrats healthcare reform package, as suggested with the public option, if 1 trillion dollars, over a ten year period.

Bush tax cuts cost 2.1 or 2.48, however you decide to view it, and the Democrats public option plan will cost 1 trillion dollars.

The report says, "Many of the lawmakers who argue that the health care reform legislation is 'too costly' are the same lawmakers who supported the Bush tax cuts."

Of those lawmakers the report blames for supporting Bush Tax cuts and not the Dems’ healthcare reform are Republican Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Republican from Kentucky.

Shahien Nasiripour, on Huffington Post reported that, “The conservative Heritage Foundation argues the Bush tax cuts spurred positive economic activity. But as a January report in The Washington Post notes, "President Bush has presided over the weakest eight-year span for the U.S. economy in decades, according to an analysis of key data, and economists across the ideological spectrum increasingly view his two terms as a time of little progress on the nation's thorniest fiscal challenges."

The CTJ report says that the top 5% of the wealthiest received 979 billion of Bush’s tax cuts, whereas the bottom 20% received approximately received 21.2 billion over the ten year period. That is .8% of the total tax cut for the bottom and where as the top 5% received 52.5% of the tax cut. The top 20% received 74.7% of the tax cut. 74.7% for the richest, .8% for the poorest.

The $2.48 trillion number would be higher if you account for inflation, which this study did not do.

Here is the link to the study I refer to throughout the article: http://www.ctj.org/pdf/bushtaxcutsvshealthcare.pdf