A Tale of Two Tax Cuts, A Wage Squeeze, And a Tax Credit‪.‬

INTRODUCTION The past five years have seen a series of major federal tax cuts instigated and implemented by President Bush and Republican majorities in Congress. The cumulative effect of these policy changes has been to reduce actual and projected federal tax revenues--and the actual and projected tax burden on American taxpayers--by trillions of dollars. For complicated procedural reasons, all of these tax cuts were designed to expire within a decade. Whether they do in fact expire or get extended indefinitely is one of the most consequential policy choices facing the United States over the next five years.