The tax cut bill that Senate Finance Committee has now sent to the Senate floor reflects the efforts of the Committee's "centrist coalition," led by Senator John Breaux (D-LA), to take a bad bill and make it better. It cuts millions of low-income families in on the tax cut bonanza, and reduces the windfall of top earners from a cataract to a mere fountain. We fully understand why some New Democrats felt obliged to cut a deal with the Republicans in order to secure these concessions, and why others may hold their noses and vote for the final product as the best available given GOP control of the White House and both Houses of Congress.

But in the end, the cumulative effect of the Senate's changes in the Bush tax plan, from the reduction of its size to the marginal changes in its composition, has been to put earrings on a warthog. Sure, it looks better, but it's still a warthog. It's too big to be consistent with long-term fiscal discipline and economic growth; too incoherent to support any rational economic policy for the country; and far too loaded with goodies for people who are doing extremely well under current tax policies.

Breaux and company deserve some real credit for forcing into the bill two measures that will actually help working families in need. First, the child tax credit -- which the bill also doubles over several years -- will now be "partially refundable," or available in part to families with no income tax liability, but who do pay high and regressive federal payroll taxes. That's a big deal, adding more than 15 million beneficiaries to the enhanced child tax credit. Second, the Finance bill adds provisions to deal with the most serious "marriage penalty" problem in the tax code: the very high marginal tax rates paid by people receiving the Earned Income Tax Credit who get married.

We're also happy that Senate Finance centrists succeeded in limiting the cuts in the top marginal rate -- which includes fewer than one percent of taxpayers -- from 6.6 percent in the Bush plan to 3.6 percent in this bill (i.e., reducing the rate from 39.6 percent to 36 percent, instead of 33 percent). According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, that means people at that rarefied level of the economy will get average annual tax cuts (when the bill's fully phased in) of $37,323, as opposed to $46,700 in the Bush plan. That's still a loaded Buick's worth of tax relief, if not a Lexus, as suggested in the Democratic attack ads on the Bush plan.

But there's actually some new bad stuff in the Senate Finance Bill, too. Much of the top rate reductions, and the phase-out of the estate tax, is "back-loaded," or phased in slowly, which means the ultimate drain on federal revenues, and the regressivity of the whole package, is deceptively understated. Indeed, the bill repeals the estate tax -- another genuinely bad idea -- in 2011, creating a big revenue loss only after the 11-year budget period when the numbers are counted.

Moreover, the bill abruptly terminates three popular tax provisions in 2006: a new college tuition deduction, a provision to keep millions of middle-income families from having their tax cut gobbled up by exposure to the Alternative Minimum Tax, and a new tax break for low-income workers who save in pension plans. Does anyone really think Congress will let any of these expire? Not us.

In other words, the overall cost of this bill is clearly going to be higher than the already excessive $1.35 trillion price tag -- maybe a whole lot higher. If the economy doesn't bounce back soon and all those future surplus estimates begin to decline, we could easily have a federal budget back in red ink, and an economy hobbled by the lack of public investment the country wants and needs to keep economic productivity high and deal with such problems as the retirement of the baby boom generation.

And speaking of the economy, the heavy "backloading" of this tax bill makes a mockery of the Administration's argument that it's needed to keep the country from sliding into a recession. We're glad the one "front-loaded" part of the bill -- indeed, it's retroactive to the first of the year -- was lowering the bottom income tax bracket from 15 percent to 10 percent, which in effect will give most families an immediate $600 tax-cut "dividend." But that's all the more reason we should have had a tax bill confined to such measures, aimed at stimulating the economy, giving all taxpayers roughly equal dollar relief, and focusing a bit more help on those at the bottom of the income ladder who are struggling to work and raise children while paying Uncle Sam far too much in payroll and other taxes.

What can be done now to this bill? One important amendment that could actually gain traction is the idea of a "trigger" provision: language that would suspend certain yet-to-phase-in tax cuts in the future if the economy turns down, revenues fall short, or Congress overspends its own budgets. DLC Chairman Evan Bayh and Vice Chairman Ellen Tauscher strongly supported a "trigger" during the early days of the tax debate. But many Democrats joined the Administration in opposing it because they feared it would make it too easy for centrist Republicans to vote for a tax bill larger than they could otherwise support. That's all water over the bridge by now, so the Senate should revisit the "trigger" as simply a way to make sure this tax bill does not fatally undermine fiscal discipline and economic growth. The Senate should also drop the dishonest backloading -- particularly of the estate tax phase-out -- that disguises the true cost of the bill.

Centrist Senators who decide to vote for this bill should also loudly make it clear they will vote against any final conference report if the House tries to move the bill back in the direction of the original Bush plan, without the improvements added in the Senate.

In the end, we hope as many New Democrats as possible vote "no," for all the reasons we have enumerated above and in our many comments on the budget and tax debate. Yes, a big tax cut is inevitable now, and yes, we're glad New Democrats worked to put earrings on that warthog. But as we suggested in the latest issue of Blueprint magazine, this is a debate that's about more than taxes: it represents a "big choice" between building on the successful economic policies of the 1990s, or returning to the failed economic policies of the 1980s, at a time when a New Economy demands fiscal discipline, higher living standards, and a vastly better-trained and educated population. The Senate Finance Committee bill, for all its relative merits, still takes the wrong fork at that crossroads, and moves our country towards the past, not the future.