 Their adherence to tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans exceeds all the other problems — deficit reduction, or tax cuts for the middle- or upper-middle-class — in cases such as the negotiation of the 1997 deficit reduction budget deal.This is not a position Republicans necessarily admit to, or are unaware of public resistance to.In 2001, internal memos told the Bush administration that "the public prefers spending on things like health care and education over cutting taxes", but the GOP went on with a major cut — one third of which went to the richest 1% of Americans.