From Paul Krugman, N.Y. Times editorial

" It may sound shrill to describe President Bush as someone who takes food from the mouths of babes and gives the proceeds to his millionaire friends. Yet his latest budget proposal is top-down class warfare in action. . .

First, the facts: the budget proposal really does take food from the mouths of babes. One of the proposed spending cuts would make it harder for working families with children to receive food stamps, terminating aid for about 300,000 people. Another would deny child care assistance to about 300,000 children, again in low-income working families.

. . . even as the administration demands spending cuts, it will proceed with the phaseout of two little-known tax provisions - originally put in place under the first President George Bush - that limit deductions and exemptions for high-income households.

More than half of the benefits from this backdoor tax cut would go to people with incomes of more than a million dollars; 97 percent would go to people with incomes exceeding $200,000.
...
But it costs a lot more to give a millionaire a break than to put food on a low-income family's table: eliminating limits on deductions and exemptions would give taxpayers with incomes over $1 million an average tax cut of more than $19,000."

Gosh, a tax cut of $19,000. That's more than I *made* all year. Every time I do my taxes, I'm struck by the absurdity of me, a 60+ year old woman, living alone, earning barely $14,000 per year, paying any tax at all, let alone the $2K or so the Feds keep, before refunding me that little $300, when we all know there are multi-millionaires who pay not one thin dime in income tax. Who am I supposed to trickle down to? (to whom ...down.) Still waiting for that lotto win, I guess.