The compromise stimulus bill likely to win Senate approval attracted a handful of Republican votes by adding tax cuts and trimming spending. Most of the spending cuts came in programs intended to aid states directly, including education assistance. However, with 46 states now in the red, and states expected to run cumulative deficits of more than $350 billion through 2011, that choice seems odd. Keeping state and local governments from raising taxes or laying off workers to meet their balanced budget requirements should be a top priority of any stimulus. Keeping income and sales taxes from rising in the heart of the recession would, at the very least, keep things from getting worse. When the New York Times surveyed economists in December, about two-thirds of economists across the political spectrum endorsed the idea of increasing federal spending to maintain current state budgets or expand education.

The stimulus bill before the Senate would exempt from income tax the first $2,400 of unemployment compensation that people receive in 2009. Because the exclusion reduces their taxable income, higher bracket taxpayers get a bigger break than those with lower incomes. And very low-income households that have no tax liability would get no benefit at all.

Not everyone, it seems, agrees with my assessment of the failure of the Obama Three to properly pay their taxes. I argued that they were among millions of us who got their returns wrong. Others, however, feel they should have known better. From Paul Caron, the esteemed blogger at TaxProf: "These are not rocket-science kinds of tax issues. I take them at their word, but on the other hand, these were not cases of something really esoteric."

The stimulus bill working its way through Congress would make both the child tax credit (CTC) and the earned income tax credit (EITC) available to more low-income workers. The CTC would phase in at lower income levels for the poorest working families, raising after-tax income for the neediest and most likely encouraging them to spend additional income. The EITC would increase for larger families, also giving more cash to families likely to spend quickly.