Need help with tax cut and deficits

Can any FReepers point me in the right direction on the following questions that I know I've seen before.

1) The % the deficit this year is in terms of GDP and its historical significance compared to other years since WW2 (I know I have seen this chart before on this website)
2) The cost of the Bush tax cuts on this year
3) What portion of #2 went to the top 2%
4) A link with the list of the deficits by quarter/year starting anytime before 2001

Any help appreciated! These would be answer to the biggest questions posed by my liberal & moderate friends and I'd like to answer them.

Can any FReepers point me in the right direction on the following questions that I know I've seen before.

1) The % the deficit this year is in terms of GDP and its historical significance compared to other years since WW2 (I know I have seen this chart before on this website)

The unified deficit is projected to be about 3.8% of GDP this year. However, this does not include any of the monies being borrowed from Social Security and the other trust funds. Counting that, the deficit is projected to be about 5.5% of GDP this year. In any case, I would suggest that it is the debt, not the deficit, that has historical significance. Each January, the prior year's deficit becomes a piece of historical trivia. What lives on is the debt that was created by that deficit. We and our children will have to pay interest on that debt forever (unless we pay it back). Hence, we should concentrate on the debt as a percentage of GDP. You can see all of the figures for the debt since 1940 at http://home.att.net/~rdavis2/debt40.html. As you can see, the debt did reach about 122% of GDP in 1946, at the end of WW2. We got it down to 33% of GDP in 1981 but have since run it back up to 65% of GDP. It is currently projected to skyrocket in the next few decades as the Boomers retire.

2) The cost of the Bush tax cuts on this year

The Bush Administration did provide the following table in its Mid-session review in July. As you can see, they estimated the cost of the tax cuts to be $290 billion in 2004. I just recently posted a summary of a CBO document that estimated the cost to be about $393 billion in 2012. I'll ping you from that thread so that you can read it.

                     Table 7. CHANGES FROM APRIL 2001 PROJECTION
                              (In billions of dollars)

                           2001 Actual 2002 Actual 2003 Actual  2004 Est.   2001–2004
                           ----------- ----------- ----------- ----------- -----------
                                  % of        % of        % of        % of        % of
                            Amt  total  Amt  total  Amt  total  Amt  total  Amt  total
                                change      change      change      change      change
April 2001 Baseline surplus --- ------ ---- ------ ---- ------ ---- ------ ---- ------
 projection ............... 284         283         334         387        1288

 Economic and technical
  reestimates:
  Receipts ................ -79   50   -288   65   -404   57   -333   40  -1104   52
  Outlays .................  -3    2     -4    1     58   -8      8   -1     58   -3

 Enacted policy:
  Tax relief:
   2001 tax relief ........ -69   44    -41    9    -94   13   -119   14   -324   15
   2002 stimulus act ......             -52   12    -38    5    -30    4   -121    6
   2003 jobs and growth act                         -36    5   -141   17   -176    8
  War, homeland, and other
   enacted legislation ....  -6    4    -55   12   -194   27   -216   26   -470   22

 Pending budget proposals                                        -1    *     -1    *
                           ---- ------ ---- ------ ---- ------ ---- ------ ---- ------
  Total change ........... -157  100   -441  100   -709  100   -832  100  -2137  100

Mid-session policy deficit  127        -158        -375        -445        -850

Note: Each change includes associated debt service.
* 0.5 percent or less.

Source: Fiscal Year 2005 Mid-session Review, Table 7 (on page 28), online at
        http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2005/05msr.pdf.

3) What portion of #2 went to the top 2%

Doing a google search, I ran across the following paragraph at : http://www.thefreebookshop.com/authors.php?a=132:

According to a report (pdf) (ftp://ftp.cbo.gov/57xx/doc5746/Report.pdf) by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office [38] (http://www.cbo.gov), fully one-third of President Bush's tax cuts from the year 2000 to 2003 have gone to people with the top one percent of income (who earn an average of US$1.2 million annually), and two-thirds went to the top twenty percent (who earn an average of US$203.7 thousand annually). According to the same report, the tax cuts have decreased the tax burden for higher income brackets and increased the burden for middle and lower income brackets. (NYT) (http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/13/politics/campaign/13tax.html?pagewanted=all)

I haven't had a chance to verify this against the CBO document but you can find the document at the ftp address listed above or at http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/57xx/doc5746/Report.pdf.

4) A link with the list of the deficits by quarter/year starting anytime before 2001

I've listed all of the deficits since 1940 at http://home.att.net/~rdavis2/def05.html.

Any help appreciated! These would be answer to the biggest questions posed by my liberal & moderate friends and I'd like to answer them.

Hope that helps! By the way, I noticed that somebody mentioned the "Only The Rich Pay Taxes" article by Rush Limbaugh. You might also want to check out an analysis of that article at http://home.att.net/~rdavis2/richpay.html.

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