Weighing the tax burden.

ITEM: "It's budget season in Washington, and this year there is some welcome substance to the usual prattle about fiscal discipline and responsibility," commented the Newark, N.J., Star-Ledger for April 3. "Democrats in both the House and the Senate are making a pay-as-you-go mandate central to their $2.9 trillion budget plans, meaning any spending increases or tax cuts have to be paid for either with spending cuts or tax increases."

Chastising the Democrats mildly for not providing "relief" from the so-called Alternative Minimum Tax that was "enacted to make sure the rich pay at least something," the Star-Ledger nonetheless concluded by praising the Democrats.

ITEM: David Abromowitz and Joan Ruttenberg, identified as lawyers and members of the group called Responsible Wealth, wrote in the Boston Globe for April 9 that not enough Americans are sacrificing economically during wartime. "In past wars, those who could most afford to pay did so. During World War II, marginal tax rates on the wealthy reached over 90 percent. During wars in Korea and Vietnam, and throughout the Cold War, the most fortunate among us contributed almost as heavily to the national effort, paying at marginal rates of over 50 percent. Economic sacrifices were shared. But now the Bush White House insists that those making $300,000 and up--already paying the lowest tax rates in 50 years--needn't bother to pay a penny more toward national needs."

Their cure is to "bring back a 40 percent marginal tax rate on high incomes ... until this war [in Iraq] is over."

CORRECTION: Marginal tax rates of 90 percent, or half that, don't seem like the good old days to most Americans. Plus, such taxation would be futile for many reasons, not the least of which is that the big spenders in Congress, Democrats and Republicans, invariably manage to spend every dollar they can lay their hands on--and more. Accordingly, war or no war, there always would be another "emergency" to devour the funds.

The Democrats prefer to place the blame for deficit spending on the Bush tax cuts, not on too much spending. The truth is otherwise. As Brian Riedl of the Heritage Foundation has noted: "Critics tirelessly contend that America's swing from budget surpluses in 1998-2001 to a $247 billion budget deficit in 2006 resulted chiefly from the 'irresponsible' Bush tax cuts. This argument ignores the historic spending increases that pushed federal spending up from 18.5 percent of GDP in 2001 to 20.2 percent in 2006."

And contrary to much propaganda, even with the Bush tax cuts (which the Democrats want to expire), total federal revenues have gone up substantially, and the results of the tax cuts have shifted even more of the tax burden to the wealthiest Americans. Indeed, in 2000, before those dreaded rate cuts, the top quintile of earners paid 66.6 percent of all federal taxes, according to Congressional Budget Office figures, and that moved up to 67.1 percent in 2004; the share paid by the bottom quintile over that same period fell from 5.9 percent to 5.4 percent.