It appears the $70 billion tax cut bill will be signed into law.  I already asked what $70 billion in federal revenue could accomplish against our mounting deficit and needs (such as continued restoration of areas devastated by last year’s hurricanes, addressing the Medicare issues, perhaps adding a bit into Social Security so it doesn’t implode quite as soon as it now will, and so on).  Instead, our fearless Republican leaders went with this plan:

The tax cut reconciliation bill (H.R. 4297) provides households with income of $1 million or more an average tax break of $42,000. In gross contrast, the more than three-quarters of the nation’s households with annual income of $75,000 or less will receive an average tax cut of $30 for one year – not even enough to pay for a single tank of gas. And average families will end up footing the bill for millionaire tax breaks through cuts in vital services and added national debt.

How do think they intend to pay for this?  They covered half of it by significantly reducing services to the American public.

The $70 billion tax break package is a companion piece to the so-called Deficit Reduction Act, which President Bush signed earlier this year. Under the guise of deficit reduction, the bill slashed $39 billion from services for low- and moderate-income Americans, including health programs, student loans, and child support enforcement. After these drastic program cuts, lawmakers delayed a vote on the tax cut bill to disguise the fact that tax cuts for millionaires were being financed in part by cuts to programs vital to ordinary Americans.

Three months later, lawmakers are unabashedly pushing through the same tax cuts that they couldn’t defend after slashing programs for the poor.

So, we the little people paid for the first half of these tax cuts for the rich, and the other half will also come out of our pockets by way of the deficit and our continuing higher tax burden.