Bush Signs Tax Cut Bill -- Do We Act Surprised?

"With no fanfare" President Bush on Friday signed the most sweeping rewrite of corporate tax law in nearly two decades, showering $136 billion in new tax breaks on businesses, farmers and other groups. " Supporters argued that the tax relief for multinational corporations would boost the competitiveness of U.S. companies, but opponents argued that it would simply provide more tax benefits to support the movement of U. S. jobs overseas.

Pres. Bush might be right, in that this is something that will help manufacturers. (Doesn't this sound like "trickle-down economics"??) However, why no ceremony for the bill-signing, like there was for the one he signed in Iowa earlier in the month?

Is it because the bill includes a $10 billion industry-financed buyout for tobacco farmers? Is it because there is a "one-year tax holiday" for multinational corporations (ostensibly to "allow them to return billions of dollars in profits to the United States at a dramatically lower 5.25 percent rate instead of the normal 35 percent top corporate rate")? Is it because Bush's own Treasury Secretary John Snow derided it as helping "myriad special interests"?