Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) took to the Senate floor today to decry the crippling effect of federal income taxes on families and the economy.<\/p>\n
“While we continue to spend and spend and spend here in Washington,” he said, “the tax burden carried by the average American gets heavier and heavier and heavier.”<\/p>\n
He must not have seen the this new study<\/a> from the Tax Policy Center, a joint project of the nonpartisan Urban Institute and Brookings Institution. Crunching numbers from the Congressional Budget Office, another nonpartisan group, analysts there found that the median middle-class family of four will owe just 4.6 percent in\u00a0federal income tax today — about half of what they owed in Ronald Reagan’s lowest tax year.<\/span><\/p>\n Much of the reason, as the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities notes<\/a>, is the generous tax break offered in the Democrats’ stimulus bill, passed a year ago.<\/p>\n