Given the outcome of the 2000 election, there was an expectation that when President Bush took office he would try to govern in a bipartisan way, putting aside the more divisive issues on his agenda. Not only could he not claim much of a mandate, he was the first president in more than a hundred years to come in second in the popular vote. But Bush did not let the circumstances surrounding the election affect his agenda. He proceeded to push ahead as if he had won by a landslide.

At the top of the list was his plan for tax cuts. President Bush made a simple argument; because the government was running a large surplus at the time, people were paying too much in taxes. As he put it during his first address to Congress, he was there to ask for a refund. The tax cuts he proposed would reduce the income tax on average by approximately 15 percent. He also proposed ending the estate tax, which applied only to the richest 2 percent of households, along with numerous other provisions, such as an increase in the tax credit for children.

The main beneficiaries of his proposed tax cuts would be the country's wealthiest families, as they paid the most in taxes. Counting the cuts in the estate tax, the richest 1 percent of taxpayers would receive approximately 40 percent of the tax cuts in Bush's proposal.