Well, it could have been worse. President Bush and House leaders say they have cut a deal on a $150 billion stimulus package—about $100 billion for families and individuals and about $50 billion for businesses. The centerpiece of the plan: a cash payment of at least $300 for most wage earners, along with an additional $300 per child.

I wrote a somewhat provocative op ed in yesterday's New York Times that sparked a lot of feedback. My modest proposal was to accelerate the expiration of the Bush tax cuts by two years—to 2009. I said that doing so would generate a burst of economic activity in 2008 while reducing the budget deficit, a rare feature for a stimulus.

With stock markets around the world sucking wind, and the Federal Reserve approving a stunning emergency interest rate cut of 75 basis points to try to forestall a Wall Street plunge, there no doubt that Washington policymakers will jump into the fray with a fiscal stimulus of their own.

When it comes to stimulus, President Bush and congressional Democrats may not quite be on the same page, but at least they are reading from the same book. I just wonder whether it is the right one.

While the Presidential candidates are campaigning on grandiose and often radical reforms to the current tax system, they are missing out on a simple commonsense reform that would make tax filing easier for millions of Americans.

Let's say President Bush and Congress agree that the U.S. needs a fiscal boost to jump-start the sluggish economy. Let's say they even reach a consensus on what to do (fantasy, perhaps, but bear with me). Could tax cuts and direct aid get to individuals, business, and states in time to forestall a recession?

At the Brookings Institution this morning, a standing-room only crowd heard five economic heavyweights debate what may become the central domestic policy issue of 2008. Do we need fiscal stimulus to keep the nation out of recession, and, if we do, what should it look like?

So who does pay the corporate income tax? The question seems simple, but the answer turns out to be exceedingly complicated.

Barack Obama, with his big victory in the Iowa caucuses, has done a terrific job positioning himself as the Democrats' candidate of change. In his "closing argument" speech a few days before the voting, Obama repeated the word no fewer than 18 times.

As most TaxVox readers know, the political establishment waited until the last possible moment to pass the inevitable extension of the AMT "patch," sparing 20 million taxpayers from the dreaded alternative tax. Now the IRS says that lawmakers' procrastination will delay the start of the tax filing season by about a month—until mid-February—for taxpayers who claim certain tax credits that the AMT would have affected but for the twelfth-hour reprieve.