Today, President Bush will sign another regressive tax cut into law. Yes, ladies and gentleman, I'm talking about the pension reform bill, which happens to not only fix some problems with the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, but also makes permanent a handful of the temporary tax cuts passed in 2001. The Tax Policy Center, a joint project of the nonpartisan Brookings Institute and Urban Insitute, estimates that the tax cuts will save people in the top income quintile about $368 a year, while people in the bottom quintile get $8. For you tax wonks, the taxes cut include (from the Tax Policy Center):

• making permanent the pension and IRA provisions in the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconcilation Act of 2001 (increased contribution limits and catch-up contributions for IRAs, increased limitation on exclusion for elective deferrals, increased annual addition limitation for defined contribution plans)
• making the Saver's Credit (Subsection (b) of Section 25B of the 1986 Internal Revenue Code) permanent; and
• indexing for inflation the limits for deduction of the retirement contributions for active participants (Section 201(g) of the 1986 Internal Revenue Code), the limits for contribution to ROTH IRAs (Section 408A(c)(3) of the 1986 Internal Revenue Code) and the limit for Saver's Credit (Subsection (b) of Section 25B of the 1986 Internal Revenue Code).

Bloomberg News also has a good summary of the tax breaks. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) says the total cost of the bill comes to about $68 billion over ten years. And, of course, the bill does not provide for a way to offset its costs, and it comes at a time when just about everyone and their uncle thinks we're headed for huge, unsustainable, structural deficits.