Tax Day

Press Release

As Americans raced to file income tax returns by the filing deadline, Senator Bernie Sanders said Congress should repeal President Bush's tax breaks for the wealthiest 1 percent of income taxpayers. Repealing the Bush tax breaks for the top 1 percent now would yield $378.5 billion from 2007 through 2010, when the tax law expires. These tax breaks include the estate tax, capital gains, dividends and income taxes, according to Citizens for Tax Justice.

"We should rescind the hundreds of billions of tax breaks that President Bush has given the wealthiest 1 percent, and use that money to begin addressing the long-neglected problems of our children and working families," Sanders said.

Partly because of the tax laws, the gap between the rich and the poor in the United States is as wide as it has been since the Roaring Twenties. In 2005, the latest year for which figures are available, the top 1 percent of American households, those with average incomes of $1.1 million a year, received more than one-fifth of the nation's income. That is the largest share since 1929, the year the stock market collapsed and the United States sank into the Great Depression.

"Today we have, by far, the most unequal distribution of wealth and income of any major country, and the gap between the rich and poor is growing wider," Sanders added. "This is an issue that Congress has ignored for too long and that must be addressed."

Sanders has proposed legislation to expand opportunities for the middle-class, lower the poverty rate and keep commitments to veterans, senior citizens, children's health care and other national priorities by repealing tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans while expanding tax relief for working families.

Sanders' legislation, The National Priorities Act of 2007, also would redirect $60 billion in the Pentagon budget by ending outdated Cold War-era weapons programs and eliminating waste, fraud and abuse. A member of the Senate Budget Committee, Sanders' legislation also would devote a portion of the restored revenue - $30 billion - to reduce the federal deficit.

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