They can't pass a budget. They're completely paralyzed on immigration reform. They're in a confused panic about energy prices. They're not even pretending to seriously deal with challenges like health care coverage and affordability. And their one-time ace-in-the-hole, national security policy, is becoming a large political handicap.

But the Republicans who control the federal government can always be counted on to do one thing: cut taxes for the wealthy. And like a weary traveler after a long, disastrous business trip, GOP leaders came home this week. Congress is poised to extend a number of tax cuts on dividends and capital gains, along with a very temporary "fix" of the alternative minimum tax and a deceptive new retirement savings break. House Speaker Dennis Hastert, who's worried he will become Minority Leader this November, called it a "day of celebration for the American people."

We don't hear much celebrating. According to the Brookings-Urban Institute Tax Policy Center, 80 percent of this bill's benefits would go to the top 10 percent of taxpayers, with almost 20 percent going to the top one-tenth of one percent of taxpayers. And the cost of this highly concentrated bonanza is being disguised by (a) making it a "temporary" extension, even though the Bush administration and its GOP allies fervently want to make these tax cuts permanent, which would expand the cost 15-fold; and (b) treating a new Roth IRA rollover provision as a revenue raiser, when it's clear the long-term impact would be quite negative.

This certainly continues the Bush Era GOP pattern of cynically hiding the cost to the public of tax cuts by making them temporary, and then extending them to "avoid tax increases" (hence the name of this legislation: the Tax Increase Prevention and Reconciliation Act). But this particular exercise in chicanery is even more cynical: The administration and the Republican congressional leadership have made it clear they will come back with another tax cut bill between now and the November elections, creating, no doubt, another "day of celebration." Slicing up the tax cuts not only enables them to squeeze legislation into the special rules that prevent a Senate filibuster; it also helps distract attention from the continuing imbalance between serial tax cuts that balloon the budget deficit and the small spending cuts (mainly affecting low-income Americans and those relying on student loans) they've enacted.

To put it another way, this strategy represents deficit financing on the installment plan, and fiscal irresponsibility in bite-sized nuggets. Moreover, at a time when concentration of wealth and growing inequality are becoming a serious challenge to our economic and political system, Republicans are doing everything within their power, as their top priority, to make this challenge even greater.

The short-term political motives driving this decision are pretty clear: Planning one more pre-election package of tax cut goodies is intended to remind privileged GOP constituencies they have a tangible stake in helping Republicans hang on to power, while offering a withered booby prize to dispirited conservative "base voters" agitated by the aimless drift of their party and its leaders.

All in all, this legislation provides a nice capsule summary of what's left of the supposedly bold GOP domestic policy agenda after Bush's 2004 re-election. It's not one thing after another. It's one thing over and over again.