Oh, the echo chamber.

During the State of the Union, President Bush offered one of his trademark misleading “average” tax cut statistics:

Unless Congress acts, most of the tax relief we’ve delivered over the past seven years will be taken away. Some in Washington argue that letting tax relief expire is not a tax increase. Try explaining that to 116 million American taxpayers who would see their taxes rise by an average of $1,800.

But as I pointed out, that figure is skewed upward by the large tax cuts received by those Americans with the highest incomes. The middle quintile of the income distribution only received a tax cut of $814 in 2010 from the 2001-2006 tax cuts.

This already misleading claim was then distorted further by Republican pollster Frank Luntz, who falsely paraphrased it to a focus group on Fox News by asking “Over 100 million Americans would see their taxes rise $1,800. Doesn’t that concern you?”

Sadly, a lot of people probably interpreted Bush’s claim the same way.