WASHINGTON -- You cannot say he did not work for it. U.S. President George W. Bush saw his beloved tax package pass Congress last Friday, with Vice President Dick Cheney casting the deciding vote in the Senate. The president had been working coast to coast the last few weeks to drum up support for his newest tax bill, which he says will create jobs the economy needs to right itself.
The $350 billion tax-cut plan should be packaged in a chocolate box, for it is a bit of a sampler. The "sunset" constraints that the centrist Republicans demanded to keep the budget from falling completely over the cliff made it impossible to do all the president's bidding in all of the quantities that he prescribed. So Bush got a little dab of this and a few years of that.
Taxes on stock dividends and capital gains will be cut to 15 percent for most taxpayers -- half of the current rate -- until 2008 before returning to current levels. Other items got similar ins and outs to keep the budget shortfall within the prescribed $350 billion over 10 years.