A common misconception about the Baucus amendment to the budget resolution, which calls for making permanent a handful of the Bush tax cuts, is that it's progressive, that it's a "middle class" tax cut. Indeed, many of the tax cuts it calls for are progressive, including the child tax credit. And it calls for an expansion the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), which could be a big boost for low to modest income-earning families. But some particularly large tax cuts here are very regressive. The amendment calls for making permanent the marriage penalty tax cut, which has been doing away with the marriage penalty for everyone except low income people (See this CBPP brief for more). The Tax Policy Center calculated that 72 percent of the benefits of the marriage penalty break now go to families in the highest 20 percent of the income distribution. Further, the child tax credit isn't even available for people who make a very low income. And the estate tax measure is regressive, even if it is a better deal than was hoped for prior to the November '06 election. I don't think anyone's done the math to find if the Baucus amendment, since it's so vague, calls for reducing tax rates more for richer people or for everyone else. But it isn't just a "middle class" tax cut, and there's no reason why almost the entire Senate should have supported it.