The Bush plan is deceitful and will cost Maine millions in the next decade.

The Republican-led United States Congress passed a risky tax cut package that represents a brazen giveaway to the wealthiest Americans and threatens to put the U.S. government in a deficit for the next 50 years.

Though the proposal was “reduced” in size from the president’s original request, the final result is being sold as a $350 billion package.

Regardless of the outcome, I am disappointed that the package has made it this far in any form. No matter what “reductions” have been accepted by Congress, the package benefits the wealthy and does virtually nothing to stimulate the economy while at the same time growing the deficit to alarming proportions.

The Bush tax cut proposal will squander billions in federal tax dollars and most of the key provisions provide very little in the form of economic stimulus for Americans who truly need it. Moreover, no credible economic evaluation has been done that indicates the mix of provisions in this bill would do much of anything to stimulate the economy.

In fact, there are only two groups that claim this proposal will create jobs: the Republican National Committee and their pseudo-independent proxy, The Business Roundtable. Their propaganda operation is so efficient that every Republican clone on television in the past few weeks has promised between 1.4 and 1.8 million new jobs.

Of course, jobs and growth was the rationale for the first Bush tax cut, but only a Republican would define “jobs and growth” as 1.7 million job losses in the last two years.

The Republicans in Maine have been similarly uniform in their job creation assertions, and similarly consistent in their blindness to the facts of the Bush tax plan.

State Sen. Ken Blais, for instance, recently penned a virtuoso compilation of dubious claims, misleading statistics and Bushspeak in defense of the proposal for the Sun Journal (May 11). The most unsavory notion that Sen. Blais employs is that of “average tax cuts” as in, “the Bush plan will provide an average of $1,083 for millions of Americans.”

Of course, what Sen. Blais does not explain is that in order to arrive at this figure he had to average the 80 percent of taxpayers who will receive less than $1,000 with the 20 percent who will receive more.

In fact, nearly 50 percent of tax filers will realize a reduction of less than $100 and 36 percent will receive nothing. What relief indeed!

Another bedrock of Sen. Blais’ argument – borrowing perfectly from the RNC playbook – promises that swift approval is necessary to immediately affect the economy. Unfortunately, neither Sen. Blais, the RNC nor President Bush received the analyses done by the Congressional Budget Office (run by Republicans), the Joint Committee on Taxation (run by Republicans) or the Council of Economic Advisors (the president’s own advisors). None of these entities stipulate that the tax cut will have any meaningful effect on the economy in the near future.

There is, however, widespread agreement that it puts the nation in a perilous position down the road.

Since the problems of the federal deficit are so familiar, however, the impact of this plan on Maine merits some attention. First, according to the state treasurer, the tax cut will result in a loss of $30-35 million to the state at a time when we have slashed over a billion dollars from the budget, and need to cut $48 million more. The cadre of anti-government conservatives will respond with glee, but for thousands of Mainers who value the many services provided by the state, this loss will further exacerbate a difficult situation.

Second, the “total” tax cut on which these figures are based is a sham.

The House and Senate finally agreed to this package only by implementing sunset clauses on seven of the eight tax reductions. In the same breath, the Republican leaders indicated it was their intention to repeal the sunsets at a later date. If Republicans remain in control of Congress, the tax cut price tag will approach $1 trillion.

This is the very definition of trickery and deceit and it will cost Maine millions more in the next decade.

Of course, it continues to be ridiculous to pass any tax cut at a time of massive deficits, war, reconstruction and shrinking funding for critical public needs like education, health care, homeland security and a pharmaceutical benefit under Medicare.

To be sure, the administration knows all thisbut what’s a few billion here and there for the richest Americans when the president is up for reelection and needs campaign contributions?

Sen. Ethan Strimling, D-Portland, serves on the Taxation Committee.