...Bob Williams of the Tax Policy Center agrees.
"Most Americans will see their taxes going down this year," Williams said.
But he warns that tax increases are on their way. The country is running huge, unsustainable deficits, he said. The spending was intended to help pull the country out of an economic recession, he said, but there will be consequences.
"Anyone who thinks we won't have to increase taxes is dreaming," Williams said.
On that point, there seems to be consensus from tax experts on all sides of of the political spectrum.
But back to Cohen's statement: "The fact is, in the past year we have had more tax cuts than almost any time in our nation's history."
Cohen has added enough qualifiers to his statement to make it defensible. He limits the window to this past year, and the Making Work Pay tax credit did translate to a significant tax cut for most working people this year. But if you take the AMT patch out of Cohen's equation -- and we think it's wrong to lump that in with the new tax cuts in the stimulus because it simply continued previous policy -- the case for having more tax cuts than any other year in U.S. history becomes a bit shakier. Still, Cohen never said it was the biggest, only one of the biggest.
We also think it's likely that many would interpret Cohen's statement to mean that he was talking about all of the tax cuts and hikes enacted by Congress this year. And if that's the case, we think critics make a strong case when they note that health care tax increases, although most don't kick in for several years, were also enacted this year.
We think that all shakes out to a Half True.