Don't fall off your chair, but it turns out the plan literally gives more relief to the top 5% of the population than to all the rest. CTJ estimates 36.9% of benefits to the top one percent.
Bottom 40% get less than four percent of all benefits. Here's the link:
http://www.ctj.org/html/bush99pr.htm
CTJ costs the bill out as $1.7 trillion over a decade, about twice as much as the ill-fated GOP tax cut of this past summer. So there is some hocus-pocus as well in Bush's claim that the tax cut leaves the Social Security Trust Fund surplus alone (although that would not be so horrible, in and of itself).
The plan has gotten a nice free ride in the press under the delusion that its benefits were broadly distributed. The trick lies in the fact that for a family with between $25 and $40K of income, a modest tax cut in dollar terms means a large percentage cut in Federal income tax liability. Those folks don't pay that much personal income tax in the first place.
Despite references to high marginal tax rates under the EITC, there is zero relief for EITC beneficiaries who had no net tax liability to begin with, nor any change in the EITC phase-out rates. There are reductions in all of the marginal rates, the plan's chief feature.
mbs