What Is That Oink, Oink?

Even George W. Bush seemed surprised at how hot tax-cut fever was getting. At a White House meeting last week with Congressmen from the Ways and Means Committee, Bush marveled that while he had proposed a $1.3 trillion tax cut on the campaign trail, "Now, all of a sudden, people are throwing out $1.6 trillion. Everything in Washington seems to grow." Massachusetts Representative Richard Neal leaned over to him. "So, Mr. President," he asked, "what is the real number?" "$1.8 trillion!" Bush shouted, then said he was only joking. But the Congressmen weren't. From the back of the room, a Republican piped up, "We think $2.2 trillion is a better number."

During the campaign, Bush's tax-cut plan seemed too grandiose to many voters. But layoffs, slipping economic indicators and a blessing from Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan made the idea credible--and now Washington can smell a big tax cut the way hogs smell slop. Politicians are scrambling to the trough. Some of their schemes are well-intended--Senate majority leader Trent Lott wants to change the alternative minimum tax so it doesn't take such a big bite out of middle-class taxpayers--but all of them threaten to grow the beast. Lott's plan would bring Bush's plan to $1.8 trillion; House majority leader Dick Armey would inflate the cuts to $2.6 trillion. Corporate lobbyists "are baying at the door" of the Ways and Means Committee, says Florida Representative Mark Foley, with pleas for up to $1 trillion in goodies--lower corporate tax rates, larger write-offs for computers, more tax credits. Kick in other tax subsidies that important constituencies like farmers want extended, and the tab runs up to nearly $4 trillion. "Time out!" pleads Max Baucus, senior Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee. "Let's slow down here."

Nobody else seems interested in hitting the brakes. At a Rose Garden ceremony last Thursday, Bush signed a letter delivering his tax-cut proposal to Congress. The same plan he campaigned on, it would lower tax rates across the board, doubling the child-care credit to $1,000 per child, reducing the marriage penalty and phasing out the estate tax. "This country has prospered mightily over the last 20 years," Bush said. "But a lot of folks feel as if they've been looking at somebody else's party."

As Bush knows, the best way to sell the cuts is to show "how they benefit children, families and workers," says a top Senate G.O.P. aide. And so the wealthy--who would get the lion's share of tax relief under Bush's plan--were kept out of sight last week. Instead, Bush flew in middle-class "tax families," with little girls in velvet dresses and boys in penny loafers. Best prop for the cameras: a single-mom waitress with two kids making $32,000 a year. (She would get $1,500 back from the government, according to Bush.) Asked by reporters where the rich tax families were, the President said he represented them.