George W. Bush campaigned for the Presidency on two central themes: tax-cuts and bipartisanship. Of course, he had other ideas, but most of them were unpopular, so strategist Karl Rove made sure that Dubya didn’t talk about those.

As it turns out, Bush is delivering on his promises of tax-cuts and bipartisanship, except without any actual bipartisanship. Working with Democrats is fun when they are conservative Democrats from Waco in the Texas legislature, but not when they include pro-choice African-Americans from Harlem, gay Jews from Boston, and female environmentalists from California.

Somehow emboldened by his 537-vote margin of victory and a deadlocked Senate, Bush decided he wouldn’t need any bipartisanship, and passed his $1.6 trillion tax cut through the House with the unanimous support of the 219 Republicans present for the vote. Democrats, opposed to the tax-cut for reasons ranging from its unfair slant towards the rich to the fiscal insanity of the numbers Bush has proposed, remained sufficiently united to lower the amount to $1.35 trillion with the help of a few moderate Republicans in the Senate.

The fact is, Bush’s tax cut (which just officially passed through Congress) and bipartisanship are mutually exclusive. Bush has refused to compromise, yielding only when moderates in his own party, such as Jim Jeffords of Vermont, have forced him to make concessions. The only Democratic support for Bush came from conservative Democrats, and even these senators still favored the slimmed-down version of the tax-cut. Never one to let facts stand in the way, Bush claimed that his dealings with Jeffords demonstrated a different kind of bipartisanship: working with members of his own party who disagree with him. Jeffords was so clearly unimpressed with Bush’s talents that he bolted from the G.O.P shortly afterwards.

Bush, aware that Americans want bipartisanship, and that he has been rightly painted as extreme by Congressional Democrats, desperately tried to regain the center. But instead of compromising, Bush did something far more interesting.

“The President’s $1.6 trillion plan should be a floor, not a ceiling,” Congressman Dick Armey of Texas told CNN in April. According to Armey, Bush’s tax cut is too small. Bush, however, stuck to his guns, insistent that what the country needed was a $1.6 trillion cut, no more and no less. Suddenly, instead of looking like the Reaganesque, government-hating conservative that he is, Bush looks like a moderate.

Of course, then there’s the question of why Bush wants a tax-cut. Clearly, he feels that the American people deserve it, although apparently the wealthier amongst us deserve it more. But during the campaign, Bush gave another reason for why we need his cut. It is true, he admitted, that today America is as prosperous as ever. (Although he claims it is not Bill Clinton who is responsible, rather it is the hard work of the American people. Apparently they weren’t working very hard when Bush’s father was in office.) However, Bush claimed that not everyone was benefiting, and that the hard-working middle-class especially were losing out. Therefore, this was to be the perfect time for a tax-cut: the economy was strong and we could afford to use our surpluses to help out those who are struggling.

However, now that the economy is hurting a little, Bush has suddenly turned into Ronald Reagan. A tax-cut, now he claims, is the best way to save the economy. In short, first we wanted the cut because the economy is good, and now we need the cut because the economy is bad.

Another important issue here is Bush’s recently proposed budget. Passed almost strictly on party lines, the $1.9 trillion plan for 2002 attempts to do the impossible: increase spending while cutting taxes. “There’s a bit of a disconnect between the rhetoric and the numbers,” added Robert Bixby, the executive director of the Concord Coalition, a fiscal watchdog group. “A very real possibility is that when all is said and done, they’ll end up using the Social Security Trust Fund.”

Not even included in the budget, which is non-binding, are close to $400 billion in funds for Pentagon-related expenditures, including Bush’s national missile defense plan. “Do the numbers add up?” asked Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-MI), “Not even close.”

And don’t think that Republicans on Capitol Hill and in the White House don’t know this. They do. They also know that by pushing their agenda of tax cuts and increased defense spending, they are forcing Democrats into a bind: either accept social spending cuts, or be accused of wasteful deficit spending. Never mind that the Democrats are the ones protesting for fiscal sanity by forcing Congress to accept a smaller tax cut. Never mind that the Republicans are (or were, thanks to Jeffords, but too late to stop the tax-cut) the party in power and thus should be held responsible for any deficit that is incurred.

Bipartisanship, it seems, is not a priority for Bush. Perhaps he did not intentionally omit bipartisanship from his agenda, but more than likely he did, because Bush is simply an arrogant man who believes he can do as he pleases. Jim Jeffords recently showed him otherwise.