This is a must read. Bob Herbert shows the real costs to Bush's tax cuts. America's rich are eating America's future.

Tax Cut Casualties
by Bob Herbert

The juxtaposition was perfect.

On Monday, the same day that President Bush was raking in $4 million and touting his tax cuts at a Manhattan fund-raiser, the trustees of the City University of New York met to formally approve the largest tuition hike in the school's history.

This is how it is in the United States these days, massive tax cuts for the very wealthy at the same time that the poor and working classes are being clobbered by reduced services and myriad tax increases of one kind or another.
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So it's too bad, kids, but this is the new American reality. You'd be getting a windfall if you were one of the high rollers at Bechtel or Halliburton. The game is rigged in their favor. But all you want to do is get a decent education so you can make something of yourself. We can't help you with that.

While the president has been trumpeting his federal tax cuts, 57 of the 62 counties in the state of New York have raised property taxes. Ten counties have raised sales taxes. Another 35 are trying to, but have come up against statutory limits. Some are pleading for permission to break through those limits.

In New York City, which includes five of the state's counties, the situation is dire. Residents have been hit with the largest fare increase in history (yes, that's another tax hike), the largest property tax increase in history, an increase in the sales tax and an increase in the top rate on income taxes. Even water fees are going up.

And, of course, it's not just New York City and New York State. California might as well throw its budget into the Pacific. And Oregon is a fiscal basket case.

The CUNY students who will have to shoulder a heavier tuition load next year are part of a broad mass of Americans who are going backward rather than forward, and who are not being helped in the least by the obsession in Washington with tax cuts.
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