Opponents of the Bush tax cuts have done a silent flip-flop on whether those cuts helped the middle class.



With the so-called fiscal cliff approaching, politicians are virtually unanimous that the expiration of the Bush-era tax law presents a clear and present danger to the middle class. According to the White House, the typical middle class family’s taxes would jump by $2,200 per year. The president recently took this message directly to the people [...with the hashtag My2K...]



Curiously, however, hardly anyone has noticed that today’s sentiment is a flip-flop for just about any Democrat who has run for any political office any time in the past decade — from the presidency on down....

...In other words, if the Bush cuts actually were just “tax cuts for the rich,” then their expiration couldn’t hurt the middle class. On the other hand, if their expiration would hurt the middle class, then characterizing them as “tax cuts for the rich” was a false message all along.



[...American] history (available from the Tax Foundation more of the burden today — so if they’re not paying their “fair share” yet, they were even further away from paying their “fair share” under Clinton...



What, then, is the “fair share” of the top income tax payers: 80 percent of the total? 90 percent? 100 percent? If we don’t define “fair share,” we can never know whether we’ve reached — or unfairly overshot — the goal.