Bush at Home ...

Word is that President Bush won't wait until his State of the Union to announce a White House stimulus package. As early as Friday, he may put out a proposal that includes some form of tax break for earners at the lower end of the pay scale, such as a tax rebate or a reduction in the base tax rate to 1% from 10%. Mr. Bush also likes the idea of bonus depreciation. The president may proffer his own ideas. It would not surprise us were he to offer a compromise plan that reflects what Congress is seeking in the form of stimulus as well.

The reason for the president's haste is that both the presidential candidates and Congress are hoping to preempt him with their own stimulus packages. Congress came back from recess this week, and Bloomberg News recently reported that Speaker Pelosi visited with Chairman Ben Bernanke to discuss the stimulus topic. The Senate comes back shortly. These columns are clearly for tax cuts, but it's important what kind they are — an important element being permanence. To compromise in the name of stimulus is to open a can of worms. Or, one could argue, a heap of them.

Lawmakers are apparently pushing the White House to accept four measures in the name of stimulus. The first is an increase in food stamps. The second is to push up Medicaid funding from the federal government to the States. The third is to expand unemployment insurance. The last is to ramp up federal funding for heating the homes of the poor through the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, or LIHEAP. We don't have a number for what the lawmakers generally want to spend on heat, but we know that Mrs. Clinton is an enthusiast for LIHEAP. Her own stimulus package proposes $25 billion in LIHEAP or assistance of its ilk.

LIHEAP is suspect for at least three reasons. First, a stimulus is supposed to work by giving money to consumers so that they can spend and jump start the economy. But LIHEAP does not give money to the consumers. It gives the billions to states, who then give cash to utilities. All the consumers get is a discount. Second, the whole point of a stimulus is that it is supposed to work instantaneously, to prevent a looming recession, or at least make that recession less bad early. The LIHEAP program serves families mostly when they need heat, in the winter months. It tends to shut down over the summer and then start up again at first frost. That $10 billion or $25 billion will sit around until the autumn. Hardly the timely move that the project's umbrella label suggests.

Third, it is an odd thing about the fuel subsidy that Mrs. Clinton or any other green likes it. In announcing her stimulus package at Commerce, California, Mrs. Clinton said that "we're not going to make progress on a lot of these tough issues until we realize we've got to get these two oil men out of the White House." Yet the one-time heating assistance that she was offering in the same speech directly subsidizes utilities – oil men, as it were. Subsidy for carbon fuels is likely to deepen the country's infamous carbon footprint, not efface it.

* * *

All of which suggests that that the better part of valor for the White House would be to hold off, now and also in the State of the Union, and abjure these kinds of targeted stimuli. The best step Mr. Bush can take for the economy, not to mention his own legacy, would be to surprise us all by taking the offense and convincing Congress to sign a law making make his earlier tax cuts permanent. Having those cuts around for the long run really will help the economy. And that's no heap.