The Washington Post reported on Wednesday's front page that House and Senate Republicans reached agreement on extending "President Bush's deep cuts to tax rates on dividends and capital gains," but the chart they used on the front page was a Democratic talking point. It shows that people with a 2005 income between $10,000 and $50,000 would receive nearly zero, while people making over $100,000 would have much larger returns. The source cited on the page is merely "Tax Policy Center."
But inside, readers learn that this supposedly nonpartisan center is a project of two liberal think tanks:
Middle-income households would receive an average tax cut of $20 from the agreement, according to the joint Urban Institute-Brookings Institution Tax Policy Center, while 0.02 percent of households with incomes over $1 million would receive average tax cuts of $42,000.
And later, the Urban Institute complains about a Roth IRA provision:
over the next 35 years, it would cost the government $36 billion, according to the Urban Institute. "And it's losing the money when we're really going to need it," said Leonard Burman, an economist at the Urban Institute.
The story itself includes both sides of the tax debate, but the Post really ought to have a more forthcoming front-page source citation, instead of trying to create a sense of ideological camouflage.
