Despite the hype, President Bush?s recently enacted $350 billion tax cut won?t help many Minnesotans, said Wayne Cox, executive director of Minnesota Citizens for Tax Justice.

The president claims every taxpayer will see a tax reduction, but analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities shows that is not true, Cox said. ?Fully a third of Americans will get nothing under this particular plan.? Others will get very little. Throughout the debate on the cuts, many questioned the White House's priorities as the economic picture darkens.

?America?s working people need jobs, good schools, a strong Social Security system and affordable, quality health care,? said AFL-CIO President John Sweeney. Even before the tax cut passed, Sweeney called the measure ?irresponsible, short-sighted and harmful to the nation?s already faltering economy.?

Others who opposed the plan before it passed last month include Rep. Martin Sabo, D-Minn., who called the plan ?plain and simple, bad policy.?

The bill passed the Senate after Vice President Dick Cheney, who as vice president is the presiding officer of the Senate, broke a tie on May 23. Cheney last year received more than $95,000 in tax returns, according to CNN. Those Americans who make less than Cheney?s $1.16 million dollars a year will see less?some not at all.

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities found that some 50 million households ? 36 percent of all households in the United States ? will receive no tax cut whatsoever in 2003. Some 74 million households ? 53 percent of all households ? will receive a tax cut of $100 or less. (This includes the households that will receive no tax cut).

Although he did not have specific figures for Minnesota, Cox said the experience for low- and middle-income taxpayers will be the same across the country. He said the plan heavily favors wealthy individuals. Even a per-child refund built into the law is higher for families earning more than $40,000 a year.

?Ironically, they didn?t apply it to the people who need it the most,? Cox said.

The tax plan actually cost Minnesota about $100 million in lost revenue, because in the last days of the legislative session, state lawmakers passed ?conformity? with the federal plan. They voted to continue to use the federal definition of adjusted gross income as the basis for Minnesota?s income tax form. Since the Bush plan removed or lowered taxes on several categories of revenue, it cost Minnesota and other states billions of dollars.

?This was done without any public discussion,? noted AFSCME Council 6 Executive Director Peter Benner, a labor leader who spent many hours at the Capitol during the session.

The Bush plan will have devastating effects on the economy in coming years, Cox said. ?Virtually all the economists who saw the plan said it is not going to be particularly helpful for jobs in the long run. It will actually be worse for the economy than doing nothing.

?In the long term, it really drives up our deficits, which are already out of control. That?s going to drive up interest rates, which is going to hit people in the pocketbook further down the road when they go to buy a car or a house.?