Having failed to enact a budget, to pass urgent intelligence reform legislation, or to agree on many of the appropriations bills for the fiscal year that began October 1; having failed to reauthorize the 1996 welfare reform legislation; having failed to enact an energy bill; having failed -- basically -- to do much of anything useful this year: The GOP-controlled Congress found time just before it sent members onto the campaign trail to enact a peculiar $143 billion tax cut package.

Theoretically, the bill was intended to repeal a tax subsidy for exporters that the World Trade Organization outlawed two years ago, exposing the United States to retaliatory trade duties by the European Community several months ago. But in reality, GOP Congressional leaders turned the bill into a classic Washington Christmas Tree: legislation designed to give Members of Congress the opportunity -- nay, the obligation -- to get in there and get some gravy for the industries important to their states and districts. It got out of hand, precisely as it was intended to, leading to a $143 billion bill aimed at "solving" a $50 billion problem.

Defenders of the legislation will tell you that most of the new tax breaks were "offset" by measures to close "tax loopholes." But these same revenue-raising measures would have been put to better use offsetting the latest Bush tax extravaganza -- the bill signed last month making some of the 2001 tax cuts permanent -- or to reduce this year's all-time high budget deficit.

But the most obnoxious argument for this deliberately engineered favor-fest is that offered by one of the chief engineers, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA): "Nearly every member raised narrow interest provisions. So if there's some fault, we all share it. We all do it." This is what's known as the "everybody does it" argument, and it's a classic example of the moral relativism that Republicans, and especially their leader, George W. Bush, are forever attacking.

The truth is that once you set up a Christmas Tree, any member of Congress worth his or her salt is going to rush to get an ornament on it. It represents a failure of leadership, not just one of those sad-but-inevitable aspects of life in Washington.

And speaking of failures of leadership, where was President Bush, that self-proclaimed titan of fiscal restraint, on this bill? Just last week, his treasury secretary attacked the bill as both bad economic policy and bad fiscal policy. But now Bush, who has not raised his veto pen even once in his four years in office, is going to sign it. So much for the "responsibility era" he promised to usher in.

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) called this legislation "the worse example of the influence of special interests that I've ever seen," a truly remarkable statement, since McCain has been in Congress for 22 years.

And this time, despite its characteristic efforts to spread the blame, it's the GOP, which runs both Houses of Congress and the White House, which must bear the blame, not only for this bill, but for one of the least successful and most damaging sessions of Congress in living memory.

As the president likes to say, "You can run, but you can't hide."