Married New Yorkers who earn more than $150,000 a year and singles who earn more than $75,000 a year will get essentially none of the tax rebates approved yesterday by Congress, making them some of the few Americans not to get a piece of the spending bonanza. Seniors couples collecting Social Security will get a $600 “rebate” check, as will couples that include a disabled veteran. But with one vote yesterday, the Senate robbed a family of four making $175,000 a year of $1,800 in tax relief that the family would get if it were earning $149,999. There’s $1,800 reasons for a spouse to stay out of the workforce or for a wage-earner not to start a small business on the side. And in New York City, where higher income earners are common, the decision by the Senate to impose a cap on the rebates cost 475,000 taxpayers, by our rough calculation, an average rebate of $900, for a total loss to New York City of $427 million.

Considering the hue and cry that arises whenever Washington tries to cut a dime out of our city’s hospitals or homeland security funding, one would think that a $427 million hit to New York City would arouse some concern in Washington or even here in New York. But one of our senators, Hillary Clinton, couldn’t even be bothered to vote on the bill yesterday. Another, Charles Schumer, while supporting a higher phase-out level — $150,000 for individuals, $300,000 for couples — when the Senate Finance Committee considered the bill, yesterday backed the bill containing the lower phaseout levels on final passage before the full Senate. Let’s just say he put a dagger through the heart of working New Yorkers.

As for the former chairman of Goldman Sachs, Treasury Secretary Paulson, he can’t be counted on to defend New York’s interests, either. Instead he issued a statement claiming that the bill “will get money into our economy quickly,” as if the money was coming from outside our economy rather than from those earning over the phase-out limits from whom it is being extracted in taxes. Mr. Paulson also issued a grim economic forecast: “Payments will be largely completed this summer, putting cash in the hands of millions of Americans at a time when our economy is experiencing slower growth.” How does he know the economy will be experiencing slower growth this summer?

Nor could the now-presumptive Republican nominee for president in 2008, Senator McCain, be counted on to stand up for tax breaks for middle-class and upper-middle-class New Yorkers. He voted for the bill with the phase-out on the rebates. No, those defending the interests of middle-class and upper-middle-class New Yorkers in the Senate yesterday were a hardy minority of mostly little-known Republicans from largely rural states, Senators Allard, Barrasso, Coburn, Corker, Craig, Crapo, DeMint, Ensign, Enzi, Gregg, Hagel, Inhofe, Kyl, Murkowski, Sessions, and Shelby. Call them the Sweet 16. And wish there were more of them.