What are the major elements of the Bush tax plan?
Robert McIntyre: There are tax cuts for the rich and there are small tax cuts for other taxpayers, though not all of them. Although it will probably be less in the final bill, under the Bush plan the highest income tax rate would drop from 39.6 percent to 33 percent. Other rates would drop less than the top rate, but some. They would double the credit that families get for their children from $500 to $1,000 per child, albeit not until the second half of this decade. They would do a little to alleviate so-called marriage penalty, whereby some couples pay more if married. And they would repeal the federal wealth tax the estate and gift tax that is a tax exclusively on the very wealthy. MM: How large are those different pieces? McIntyre: About half of the cost comes from the rate cuts. About a quarter is the estate tax and the other quarter is very small income tax changes. The total as Bush proposed it was something in excess of $1.6 trillion over 10 years. It was only that small because
