Free $800.00 just for being an American CitizenFollow

That's nice but it doesn't answer the question of why Bush's amazing economy, the one you said should set him up in the Hall of Great Presidents, should lead to our fearless leader scrambling to bail out the boat.

Seems to me you should rebate more to the wealthy since they paid more taxes. And they know how to spend it better anyway. A flat rebate just isn't fair.

Nah. The wealthy would just add it to their investment portfolio, which is great and all, but presumably they want this to be spent on consumption. Handing out large numbers of checks to the masses is a great way to do that, since the vast majority of them will simply cash the check and go out and spend it on DVDs and sporting equipment (or whatever).

But in 1974, the White House was keen on the idea of cutting taxes to stimulate private spending. Since it was feared that a permanent tax cut might be inflationary, President Gerald Ford and the Democratic Congress agreed on a one-shot tax rebate. It was thought that cash-strapped consumers would take their government checks and immediately run out and spend them on food, clothing and other necessities.
[...]
One dissenter was economist Milton Friedman. His research had led him to conclude that consumer spending was less a function of liquidity than something he called "permanent income." [...] [C]onsumers didn't immediately spend windfalls. They kept spending on an even keel until they achieved a promotion at work, or other increase in their long-term income expectations.

Thus Friedman predicted that the $100 to $200 checks disbursed by the Treasury Department in the spring of 1975 would have a minimal impact on spending, because they did not alter peoples' permanent income. Most likely, people would save the money or pay down debt, which is the same thing. Very little of the rebate would cause consumers to buy things they wouldn't otherwise have bought in the near term.

Subsequent studies by MIT economists Franco Modigliani and Charles Steindel, and Alan Blinder of Princeton, showed that Friedman's prediction was correct. The 1975 rebate had very little impact on spending and much less than a permanent tax cut -- which would change peoples' concept of their permanent income -- of similar magnitude.

In 2001 -- despite the thoroughness and general acceptance of these studies -- Congress and the White House once again chose a one-shot tax rebate to deal with an economic slowdown in 2001.

To his credit, Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill cautioned against the rebate.[...] But President George W. Bush overruled his Treasury secretary and approved the rebate idea. Checks of $300 to $600 per taxpayer were sent out in the late summer. Contemporaneous polls by Gallup, Bloomberg and the University of Michigan all found that the vast bulk of consumers expected to save the money or use it to pay bills. Subsequent studies confirmed these forecasts.

In short, there is virtually no empirical evidence that tax rebates are an effective response to economic slowdowns.

A new rebate probably won't do much harm. But anyone who thinks it will prevent a recession -- if one is actually in the pipeline, which is not at all certain -- is dreaming.

It will help my computer become more shiny. Anyone who is against that is a damn dirty communist!