The politicians won again. They have managed to convince the majority of their constituents that they have created an historic budget balancing and tax reduction package that will save the nation.

This is nothing but hyperbole and deceptive rhetoric. The balanced budget figures are based on unrealistic economic forecasts and over 70% of the so called spending reductions to balance the budget are back loaded into the last two years ( 2001 - 2002 ) of the budget forecast. Isn't it nice to leave all the tough problems till after you are out of office are until long after the public remembers who made what promises. And what makes all this rhetoric more deceptive is that they are not cutting spending at all but increasing spending. Reducing the figure from the prior budget is called a cut even though it increases actual spending.

And why are they claiming to balance the budget in five years when they are using $75 billion dollars a year of payroll taxes for Social Security for general government spending and waste and using this creative book keeping to hide the REAL deficit? They have already hidden $600 billion of deficits by spending Trust Fund money for general government operations and not counting this in the deficits. Our politicians are lying to us.

And why are we taking five years to theoretically balance the budget when our real objective should be to reduce waste and spending to create a surplus so we can pay down our huge $5 trillion dollar national debt? This is costing us over $300 billion dollars a year in interest payments.

And the politicians are trying to claim they have engineered a huge tax reduction with a break for everyone. The reality is much different. Our present tax system is a politicians Christmas tree of special tax breaks to curry votes and campaign contributions. The over 9,000 page tax code is so complex that even the IRS cannot render consistent interpretations and tax payers spend close to $200 billion dollars per year on tax accountants, tax attorneys and time to prepare and defend their tax returns.

Obviously what is needed is a complete overhaul and simplification of our tax system. What do we get instead? We get further increases in the tax codes complexity and more special tax treatments.

First is a reduction in Inheritance taxes for the wealthy. Does this make sense when wealth has been concentrating in fewer and fewer hands over the past few decades? A few decades ago 1% of the population controlled 23% of the nations wealth. Now, 1% of the population controls over 40% of the nations wealth. Wealth equals influence and power. Do we want to create a country controlled by a wealthy elite? We are approaching that at present and these tax breaks will only exacerbate the problem.

Why did our politicians do this? Firstly it is because their own pay and benefits along with their multimillion dollar retirement plans assure that most if not all will be leaving large inheritances to their children which they don't want heavily taxed. Secondly they need to feed their large campaign contributors some special benefits to keep the campaign funds coming in to assure their reelection.

The really silly one is the new special reduced rates on capital gains. Why is income derived from a form of speculation and/or windfall profits deserving of special lower tax rates than income from dividends, interest or hard work? Now there is no question that the old capital gains tax was unfair in that it taxed mythical income caused by inflation but why not just let nominal capital gains income be adjusted for inflation to arrive at real income and then treat it the same as any other income? Reason? The short term speculators would have to pay more taxes.

And now for family values and saving the children. This assures everyone that our politicians are for God and motherhood. All one has to do is look at the news about increasing pollution of our land, air, lakes, rivers and even the oceans to realize we have some serious problems. Now also take a look at our crowded cities, highways, parks and other public facilities and most would agree we have to do something before the problems become even worse than they already are. These problems are all caused by one thing - excessive population growth.

What is our politicians solution? Let's help families by increasing the incentives to have children by providing an annual $500 dollar tax break per child on top of the $2500 personal exemptions and about $5000 per year in free schooling and a new multimillion dollar Kidicare program to take care of their health care.

Should we be encouraging or discouraging more births and further population growth? Is this tax break to help families or to curry favor from 28,000,000 families with children (56,000,000 voters) so incumbents are assured reelection?

Then to really add more complexity to the system let's tax low income people 15.3% in payroll tax, then give them back low income reverse tax payments and then a $500 dollar reverse tax payments per child.

Fortunately this tax reduction program is more hyperbole than fact. It showers tax breaks on special groups but only amounts to less than a 1% reduction in taxes overall. Not exactly historic, huge or revolutionary change as claimed.

Don't be deceived. It is really the same old politics of much hyperbole, rhetoric and continuing with business as usual.