So this is what Congress finds stimulating?

Perhaps you have already figured this out, but I am only now getting it.

The "Make Work Pay" tax credit in the stimulus bill is $400 in 2009 and again in 2010. So in total it is larger than the $600 check from IRS that the Bush administration pushed through last year, an approach that was, at best, a total failure. The MWP credit will be handled as an adjustment to withholding, rather than as a lump sum, because according to some economists that approach reduces the "risk" that taxpayers will save the money. We need spending now, not saving. I guess. I don't really understand that part. And although the President has warned us of imminent catastrophe, we can wait until June for the money (and much later for the jobs).

Anyway, this is how the credit will look to me. Sometime in about June (why June? no one has said, but most likely IRS is busy until then) my tax withholding will go down by about $13. Yay! Then next January my tax withholding will go up by about $6. That's because next year the same $400 credit will be spread over 12 months instead 7. Crap, that will still feel like a tax increase to me. I will have grown accustomed to that $13 extra. Then in 2011 my withholding will go up again by another $7 as the credit expires—another tax increase.

That seems like a really bad approach to me. The psychology is all wrong. Why hasn't the MSM jumped all over it?

Someone should tell Congress that it's not the money, it's the attitude. There's nothing in this stimulus bill that has any chance of giving individual taxpayers hope. Or relief.

By the way, is anyone else troubled by the fact that everyone is saying that the feds are "spending" $800 billion? The spending part of the bill was only about $500 billion, the rest is "uncollected tax revenue" which was mostly never going to be collected anyway. Why are they exaggerating the spending portion now?