E-PICs is a regular feature of the JEC Democrats' webpage. New charts, each highlighting economic data of interest with important policy implications, will be released periodically.

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June 22, 2005 Social Security Benefit Cuts versus Tax Cuts Download this chart. President Bush has proposed cutting Social Security benefits for all but the lowest earners and making permanent the tax cuts enacted between 2001 and 2004. Proponents of the Social Security proposal call it “progressive price indexing,” but when the resulting benefit cuts are juxtaposed with the tax cuts, it is clear that the President’s agenda is anything but progressive. For example, the benefit cuts facing today’s workers who will have career earnings of more than $1 million per year are almost three times as large as those of their counterparts who will have average career earnings ($36,600 in 2005). In contrast, taxpayers making more than $1 million per year will receive an average annual tax cut of $160,200—more than 200 times the size of the tax cut going to middle-class taxpayers.