Incomes Grew After Past Tax Cuts, but Guess Whose<br />That is less surprising when one realizes that for all the stories about harried workers in the Midwest shouldering an unbearable tax burden, tax relief since Reagan’s fateful State of<br />the Union speech has mostly been aimed at benefiting the well-to-do: The average tax rate for Americans in the bottom half of the income pile was higher in 2014 than it was in 1980.<br />For one in two Americans, though — those in the bottom half of the income pile — income actually shrank on Reagan’s watch.<br />“If we had the money,” Steven Ramos, a school administrator, told somebody on the president’s<br />staff, “it would help us reach our goal of paying off our personal debt in two years’ time.”<br />And yet, during Mr. Bush’s two terms, the average income of the bottom half of Americans slid from $17,827 to $17,473, accounting for inflation.<br />President George W. Bush passed two rounds of tax cuts, in 2001 and 2003, arguing<br />that the United States had a budget surplus “because taxes are too high and government is charging more than it needs.”<br />To make his case, in 2001 Mr. Bush deployed the Ramos family of Pennsylvania, which he said would save $2,000 from his first round of cuts.<br />Speaker Paul D. Ryan might chuckle fondly at Reagan’s tale of woe from a worker in the Midwest — a precursor to Mr. Ryan’s “Cindy”— who made the everyman’s<br />case for a tax cut by complaining, “I’m bringing home more dollars than I ever believed I could possibly earn, but I seem to be getting worse off.”<br />For all the backslapping over a job well done, however, Republicans are proving notably<br />more reluctant to acknowledge the true impact of the tax changes that Reagan wrought.
