The Phase-Out

The "stimulus" agreement reached yesterday between President Bush and Speaker Pelosi cuts taxes for one year on families earning $150,000 a year or less, but it phases out rapidly above that level. As the Wall Street Journal put it in a news article last night, "Couples with incomes of greater than $170,000 — wouldn't receive the rebates."

In other words, this isn't a "stimulus" but a redistribution of wealth from families who earned more than $150,000 a year to those who earned less than that. These $150,000 and up earners — roughly the top 5% of taxpayers — already pay about 60% of the federal income tax, even though they account for just 36% of the income. That 60% share in 2005 was the highest in the past 25 years, according to IRS data on the Tax Foundation Web site.

The top 5%, in other words, are already paying more than their share of taxes. And many of those at the lower end of the top 5%, especially in areas like New York where housing costs are high, are straining to pay tuition costs, as Yale and Harvard recently realized in increasing financial aid to such families.

The Pelosi-Bush plan would shift even more of the tax burden to the top 5% by giving rebates to everyone but them. What's phasing out, in other words, isn't just the tax breaks, but President Bush's longtime insistence that, as he put it in a presidential debate back in 2000, "If you pay taxes, you ought to get tax relief." Or, as he went on back then, "I think if you're going to have tax relief, everybody ought to get it. And, therefore, wealthy people are going to get it."

Here's hoping the Senate lards this so-called stimulus with enough wasteful and counterproductive spending that Mr. Bush has to veto it. At that point, if a stimulus is still needed, Mr. Bush can start over from the principles on which he ran for office.