Political Scientists Assess Public Support for Bush Tax Cuts

September 22, 2005: The 2001 and 2003 Bush tax cuts received majority public support despite the skewing of their benefits to wealthier Americans. Two recent studies by political scientists put forth different explanations for the sources of this public support. The first, by Larry Bartels of Princeton University, concludes that the tax cut legislation did in fact respond to public opinion. The second, coauthored by Jacob Hacker of Yale University and Paul Pierson of the University of California, Berkeley, concludes that the public was deliberately misled during the debate. Both articles appear in the March 2005 issue of Perspectives in Politics, a journal of the American Political Science Association.

• Read the full press release
  
  
• Read the Bartels article: "Homer Gets a Tax Cut: Inequality and Public Policy in the American Mind"
  
  Read the Hacker/Pierson article: "Abandoning the Middle: The Bush Tax Cuts and the Limits of Democratic Control"
  
  
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