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Information regarding the shape of Bush’s 2001 tax cut comes from Citizens for Tax Justice: http://www.ctj.org/html/gwbfinal.htm.

The statistics regarding the shape of the 2003 tax cut (the ones refuting Sean Hannity’s inference) come from the Urban Institute–Brookings Institution Tax Policy Center (UIBITP). Check them out for yourself at http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/commentary/admin__stimulus/section2/table2__1.pdf.

The Yahngs’ moment in the sun came at a February 20, 2001, Tax Family Event that the White House was kind enough to transcribe and post at http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/02/20010220-5.html.

Payroll tax information comes from UIBITP: http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/UploadedPDF/1000456__payroll__income.pdf.

The Washington Post ran a story about the New Mexico tax family recruitment on September 13, 2000, entitled “For Bush’s ‘Typical’ Family, Lots of Restrictions.”

One quarter of the surplus would have been $1.15 trillion. Bush’s tax cut was $1.6 trillion. That’s a difference of $450 billion. According to the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, the net increase in discretionary spending in Bush’s plan was $330 billion. Check it out for yourself: http://www.cbpp.org/10-19-00bud.htm.

According to Salon.com (June 18, 2002), Bush told his “trifecta” joke this way in Iowa on June 7, 2002. And the White House recorded him saying it a dozen other times in the previous four months. In the Washington Post article “Karl Rove, Adding to His To-Do List,” published June 25, 2002, it was reported that Bush continued to use the line after its lie was exposed on Meet the Press. And the Washington Post, in an article entitled “A Sound Bite So Good, the President Wishes He Had Said It” on July 2, 2002, revealed that Gore had actually made the statement, not Bush.

For more on the big lie about family farms being lost due to the estate tax, and to see for yourself that I didn’t make up the statistics about its perceived and actual effects, see the April 8, 2001, New York Times article instructively titled “Talk of Lost Farms Reflects Muddle of Estate Tax Debate.”

The amendment that Wellstone voted for that would have exempted all family farms was Senate Amendment 3832 to H.R. 8, proposed by Senator Dorgan of North Dakota.

To hear the “Money-Grubbing” ad, go to http://news.mpr.org/features/200206/21__mccalluml__adwatch/index.shtml.

Figures on who pays the estate tax come from Paul Krugman’s excellent October 20, 2002, New York Times essay, “For Richer.” Also taken from this piece, which you really should read, are the statistics about the top 1 percent of earners at the end of the chapter. Except for the population of Bemidji. Which, like that of Sweden, I got from an encyclopedia.

David Brooks’s New York Times piece on the estate tax, “The Triumph of Hope Over Self-Interest,” was published on January 12, 2003.

The fact that estates worth upward of $10 million consist of at least 56 percent capital gains comes from the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities. Here’s another link that you could click on if you were using some sort of hybrid book-computer: http://www.cbpp.org/3-15-01tax2.htm.

The Democrats’ futile attempt to raise the estate tax exemption is detailed in “Hatch Withdraws Research Tax Credit During Senate Votes,” the National Journal’s Congress Daily report for May 22, 2001

The Wall Street Journal was so proud of introducing the concept of “lucky duckies” in its November 20, 2002, editorial “The Non-Taxpaying Class” that the concept was brought back for its “Lucky Duckies Again” editorial on January 20, 2003.

36—The Waitress and the Lawyer: A One-Act Play

Thanks to the help of Andrew Lee and Richard Kogan at the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, William Gale at the Brookings Institution, and Jeffrey Liebman at Harvard, the figures in this play are derived from actual numbers and events.

Donna’s payroll tax burden was computed based on a 15.3 percent rate, multiplied by her $25,000 income.

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