ONE **TRILLION** DOLLARS, TWO **TRILLION** DOLLARS

Democrats need to start using this word -- TRILLION -- more often. The Republican tax cut plan is a tax cut close to ONE TRILLION DOLLARS if one factors in all of the cuts that eventually Bush will argue need to be made permanent. ONE TRILLION DOLLARS. ONE TRILLION DOLLARS. You don't even HAVE to say it in your Doctor Evil voice for it to sound creepy and wrong.

And House Republicans are not satisfied:

"House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) said Republicans are just beginning. He said the House will send more than a trillion dollars in additional tax cuts to the Senate "in the very near future".

Can you say TWO TRILLION DOLLARS?

And at a time in which states and localities are in financial free fall, and feeling the weight of additional security measures?

And I'm not surprised that some folks argue that the price tag doesn't matter. That's because the sticker shock of this tax bill will floor most people.

Just say it: trillion trillion trillion. Kind of rolls off the tongue. Give it a chance to sink in.

MORE: Jim at OTB wants to parry and thrust his way to a criticism of Demcratic wastefulness here, as in, that two trillion dollars would have been wrested from the hands of hardworking Americans and piddled away if Republicans hadn't stepped in. But Jim omits my real criticism: size matters because there are higher priorities than tax cuts (i.e., homeland security). States are getting the fiscal crap kicked out of them already, and instead of helping them out, the President pushes a tax cut plan. Brilliant. But Jim also omits the same word that Republicans have consistently omitted in the whole discussion: deficits. Call it the "D-word." Too bad it isn't spelled with four letters.

For a good take on the whole tax cut thing, see the transcript of the online interview with Brookings economist William Gale. One nibble:

Cape Town, South Africa: To what extent are columnists such as Paul Krugman exaggerating the "fiscal crisis" that could result from the tax cut, as well as the claim that 'radicals' have hijacked domestic fiscal planning in an attempt to cut social spending programs that otherwise would be politically untouchable?

William Gale: I think Krugman has been not only right on the money but even prescient in his analysis.

The nuts and bolts of his analysis are important as well.