Bush's first term was marked by the passage of excessive tax cuts. This year alone, the cost of those tax cuts will be $ 215 billion. Roughly $ 47 billion of that amount will go to the top 1 percent, or in other words a group of people whose average income is about $ 1 million per year. These tax cuts are not paid for, and are significantly more costly than the war in Iraq, Medicare drug benefits, and the projected social security shortfall. It is no secret that our deficit and national debt are disturbingly high and not on track to be responsibly repaired any time soon. Adding to the deficit burden is the cost of these excessive tax cuts. How will the administration choose to deal with this? When the President releases his budget in early February, we may very likely see that his solution will be to freeze or significantly cut non-defense discretionary spending. Another way to view non-defense disretionary spending is to think of it as services for people paid for by the federal government. This means education, medicaid, medicare, child care, environmental protection, veterans' health care, housing and many other programs. The administration and Congress seem to think that taking away from these programs to give $ 47 billion back to the rich this year is how to solve our fiscal problems by "growing the economy." Taking away necessary and vital programs used and depended upon by millions and millions of people in order to give a sizeable chunk of that money to the rich will not grow anything except the size of the gap between the rich and the poor in this country. Check out this link for an informative editorial in today's Washington Post.