WHEN PRESIDENT George W. Bush signed the $350 billion tax cut a week ago, he declared: ''The Jobs and Growth Act reduces federal income taxes across the board.... We have passed a bold package of tax relief ... that reaches every single corner of America.''

Bush said that even as he swept millions of the working poor and lower middle class into a dusty pile in his conscience. According to four centrist and liberal economic think tanks - the Brookings Institution, the Urban Institute, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, and Citizens for Tax Justice - 8 million taxpayers who make less than $75,000 a year will get no tax cut at all. That number includes 6.6 million working people who earn no more than $30,000 a year.

The think tanks also found that while child tax credits increased for wealthier families from $600 to $1,000, Congress dropped the credits for the families in the income range of $10,500 to $26,625. There are 6.5 million such families, with 12 million children. All it would have taken to cover those families would have been $3.5 billion, a mere 1 percent of the tax cut. The poor were axed by politicians who did not want to take one drop out of the waterfall of welfare for the wealthy. Taxpayers who earn over $1 million will receive an average benefit of $93,500.

The Republicans had to know the human dust pile was too big to hide because as soon as it was found, Senator Charles Grassley of Iowa, the Republican chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said he would make new proposals to cover the families left out. ''Some tax relief is a no-brainer,'' Grassley said Monday. Grassley did not explain where his brains were prior to Monday.

Three Republican senators, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine and John Warner of Virginia, are cosponsoring another proposal with Democrat Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas. ''I wasn't in the room during those negotiations in the dark of night, and I understand that very few of my colleagues were,'' Lincoln said. ''But we are here today, united in our effort to fight for these working families.''

The tax cut is already dumb and selfish, coming at a time of deeply wounded city and state budgets. The fact that Bush would allow selfishness to reach a level where the average millionaire's tax cut is four to nine times the annual income of a family of the working poor is a profound contradiction to the vision he displayed when he ran for president.

In September 1999, when the Republicans in Congress tried to defer tax credit payments to the poor, candidate Bush upset many in his own party by declaring: ''I don't think they ought to balance their budget on the backs of the poor.... I'm concerned that someone who moves from near-poverty to middle class pays a higher rate on their income. I think we ought to make the tax code such that it's easier for people to move from near poverty to the middle class.''

For that statement, Bush suffered some barbs from Tom DeLay, then the House majority whip, who said, ''It's obvious Mr. Bush needs a little education on how Congress works.'' On ''Face the Nation,'' Representative Ray LaHood of Illinois compared Bush to Jimmy Carter. Conservative presidential candidate Gary Bauer said, ''That phrase, `Don't balance the budget on the backs of the poor,' that is a classic Ted Kennedy, Barney Frank, Democratic National Committee line.''

For a minute Bush was praised on many liberal editorial pages in the hope that this was a sign of his compassionate conservatism to come. News stories trumpeted the return of the poor to center stage in politics. Political experts said he was trying to woo moderates with the image of a more gentle Republican Party on social issues in the reverse of how Bill Clinton claimed the center by hardening the image of the Democrats.

A week after the ''backs of the poor'' statement, Bush continued the thought in a speech in New York. He said: ''Too often my party has confused the need for limited government with a disdain for government itself.... There are human problems that persist in the shadow of affluence.'' His speechwriter, Mike Gerson, said, ''The goal is not to compromise conservative principles but to apply those principles to the job of helping real human beings.''

Since then, it is obvious Bush has received his education. The poor are back in the shadows because Bush balanced the tax cut on their backs. Embarrassed Republicans are now calling for compassion. They will have to display an uncommon amount of it to erase the image of a party that was going to give millionaires $93,500 and the working poor and the lower middle class nothing.

© Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company

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