May 30, 3:05 p.m.: The meaning of tax cuts

There are some new rules in Washington.

By: Hank Kalet
   The massive — and. At best, questionable tax cut — signed into law this week by President George W. Bush signals two things.
   One, that the Bush administration and conservative Republicans could care less about lower income Americans:
   Read this story:
   "Perhaps the highest-profile victim of negotiations between House and Senate Republicans and the White House was a Senate provision that would have extended the child tax credit to working families on the edge of poverty. Because the provision did not survive, 8 million children will get no additional benefit from the tax bill, and another 4 million will get only a limited benefit, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal think tank.
   "Congress approved President Bush’s proposal to immediately raise the $600 child credit to $1,000, which otherwise would have happened slowly over this decade. But Bush did not urge acceleration of another provision of the 2001 tax cut that in 2005 will increase the size of the child credit for low-income families that pay little or no income tax, and neither did the House.
   "The Senate bill included a low-income child credit provision that would have benefited families with annual incomes from $10,500 to $26,625, at a cost of $3.5 billion. It was dropped to help squeeze the House-passed tax cut down to the size — $350 billion through 2013 — that could win final approval in the Senate, said Christin Tinsworth, spokesman for the House Ways and Means Committee."
   (Also, see this cartoon by Tony Auth.)
   And two, the rules in Washington have changed for the worse. E.J. Dionne Jr. explains how in this pointed column in The Washington Post:
   "Bush promised to change the ways of Washington," he writes. "He has succeeded brilliantly, but not by creating the ‘new tone of respect and bipartisanship’ he promised in 2000. The new tone in Washington is not bipartisan but hyperpartisan."
   And that does not bode well for democracy.