@kewp Re: Presidential fiscal policy; the only big issue I have with GW is that he started a war while cutting taxes for the wealthy. Leaving the lower classes to shoulder the burden (and the dead).
You might want to double check the cutting the taxes on the wealthy. This claim was generally made in response to cutting the capital gains tax. If you look at what happened, you will find that instead of 20%, there was 5%, 10% and 15% LTCG tax points. The 5% and 10% rates are for lower income brackets. Where they once had to pay a higher tax rate than their income tax rate, they now pay a lower. 15% kicked in above that.. but before you say “But it also dropped the LTCG rate on high income from 20% to 15%” realize that AMT was not changed. Any income above $146,000 is subject to a 26% AMT override for single taxpayers (I would need to check the schedule for filing joint/separate). This override makes the reduction to 15% on LTCG moot because AMT forces total tax back up to 26% on fed. LTCG is taxed as income in CA.. so its at full rate.
The only real ‘rich’ gimmie that he gave was on Real Estate (being able to roll out an amount LTCG tax free).
