Obama Asked for $300 Billion in Tax Cuts; House Dems Give Only $182 Billion

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9:10 AM, Feb 2, 2009 • By JOHN MCCORMACK

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Time's Michael Scherer writes:

At the start of the year, Barack Obama's team announced, to some significant fanfare, that the president wanted 40 percent of the stimulus package, or about $300 billion, to come in the form of tax cuts.

On Friday, the Congressional Budget Office scored the bill passed out of the House last week. It contains only $182.3 billion of tax cuts, or about 22 percent of the total cost. A previous CBO review of the bill, when it was introduced days earlier in the House, had a slightly larger figure for tax cuts, $211.8 billion, or about 26 percent. A week before that, on January 15, the top tax writer in the House, Democratic Rep. Charlie Rangel, announced that the stimulus bill would include $275 billion in tax cuts. This is what mathematicians, accountants and your local dive bar bookie would call a trend: 300 --> 275 --> 212 --> 182.