Their actions give us a foretaste of what the "compassionate conservatism" of George W. Bush is really all about: "Compassionate" translates into the enactment of billions of dollars in tax relief and "conservatism" means the great bulk of these billions are going to make the richest Americans richer.

President Clinton has vetoed one such bill and is committed to veto the rest. Republican presidential nominee Bush proudly supports them all.

Let’s start with the estate tax:

Working families and low-income seniors will get no relief at all – not one cent from the Republican bill to repeal the estate tax. Estates of any size, if bequeathed to a spouse, incur no tax liability.

In 1997, the 2,400 largest estates paid nearly half of all estate taxes. Had the law been repealed, these wealthy inheritors would have reaped an average windfall of $3.4 million in that year.

Yale law professor Michael J. Graetz, a former Treasury Department official, has estimated that about one-third of the progressive aspect of the federal tax system as a whole is attributable to the estate tax.

"Why scrap our only wealth tax, one that accounted for $28 billion of revenue in 1999?" asks Robert Kuttner in the July 31 American Prospect.

It’s estimated that estate tax revenue will soon rise to about $50 billion a year. "That kind of money could buy prescription drug coverage for the elderly," Kuttner notes. "It could more than finance universal Head Start."

The marriage penalty:

The Republicans have also passed legislation purporting to eliminate the "marriage penalty" – the quirk in the tax code that requires millions of couples to pay more in taxes simply because they are husband and wife.

The problem with the bill is that it also cuts taxes for millions of other couples who already pay less in taxes. Two thirds of this relief goes to couples making more than $75,000 a year. The Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation estimates its cost over 10 years at $292 billion.

Clinton supports elimination of the marriage penalty, but he vetoed this measure, describing it as "the first installment of a fiscally reckless strategy."

IRAs and 402(K) plans:

The House passed, HR-401-25, a bill increasing the maximum amounts employees can contribute annually to their independent retirement accounts (IRA) and their 401(k) plans.

This legislation, says the Washington Post, "would greatly sweeten the pensions of the better off while doing next to nothing for the lowest-income 60 percent of the population, most of whom have no pensions and little other retirement income."

The Post reports that "employer groups, along with brokerages, mutual funds and other financial institutions that stand to benefit from increased contributions to savings plans are delighted with the measure."

But pension advocates see big problems, noting that the increased contributions allowed by the bill will benefit only those who can afford to pay them. That not the typical U.S. full-time worker earning $30,000 a year.

Karen Ferguson of the Pension Rights Center says those who back this legislation are "ducking the really hard issue ... How do we get a retirement system on top of Social Security that will assure that people who can’t otherwise save adequately for retirement will get the income they need when they are too old to work?"

Social Security tax cuts:

Both the House and Senate have passed Republican-sponsored bills that repeal a 1993 tax on high-income Social Security recipients. The proceeds from this tax are earmarked for the Medicare program.

The New York Times on July 28 said that "repeal would ... hand an unwarranted $100 billion tax cut to the 15 percent or so wealthiest retirees over the next ten years."

And a July 24 Washington Post noted that repeal would deprive Medicare "of revenues it cannot afford to give up. The Social Security actuary puts (the lost revenue) at $14 trillion over the standard estimating period of 75 years.

The effect, says the Post, "would be to put an enormous long-term strain on the rest of government ... Revenue that would otherwise be available to improve Medicare – add a drug benefit, for example – would instead have to be used merely to sustain it in its present tottering condition.

"This is awful legislation, election-year pandering at its destructive worst," the editorial concludes.