The journey to this year’s tax cuts reflects policymakers’ difficulty in balancing several competing visions of the future and claims on the projected federal surplus.  Some wanted to repay the publicly held debt of the government and save for a future downturn.  Others saw an opportunity to invest in education, Medicare prescription drug coverage, and other initiatives.  President Bush campaigned on his vision of how to balance these competing concerns.
	From a projected $5.6 trillion surplus for the period 2002-2011, he asked Congress to preserve $2.6 trillion attributable to Social Security and to allocate $1.6 trillion of the remaining $3.0 trillion in projected surpluses for tax cuts and $0.6 trillion for other spending and increased interest costs.  The Act largely follows the president’s tax plan cutting taxes by $1.35 trillion through 2011.
	The Act represents the largest tax cuts since 1981.
	•  It imposes a complicated array of unprecedented back-loaded (time delayed) effective dates reaching out to 2010.  Some provisions are effective in 2001, many start next year, and others won’t start until five or 10 years from now.
	•  Unfortunately, the Act contains a provision terminating its tax cut provisions after December 31, 2010 (sunset provision).  This is an artifact of arcane federal budget rules, that will have the effect of creating an enormous expiring provision issue to be addressed by later Congresses.