Over the weekend, before tax filings were due, President Bush used his radio address to ask Congress to extend his tax cuts permanently. "Tax relief has done exactly what it was designed to do," Bush said. "It has created jobs and growth for the American people." But the Los Angeles Times found that as the tax code's progressivity decreased under Bush, "tax rates have contributed to huge increases in the wealth of the wealthy, but so far most people haven't seen significant economic improvement." "It's as if Santa Claus dropped bags of money down everybody's chimney," said the Tax Policy Center's Leonard E. Burman. "Only he dropped extra-big bags in rich people's homes, and extra-small ones in smaller homes." One recipient of Santa's largest "bags of money" this year is Vice President Dick Cheney, who reportedly is entitled to a $1.9 million tax refund. The disparity between the wealthiest Americans and everyone else has grown. "Last year, for example, a typical corporate chief executive officer made 279 times the average pay of a non-supervisory production worker," according to an American Progress report. Meanwhile, conservative senators are using budget gimmickry to mask the deficits that more tax cuts for the wealthy would create. "That's amazing," the Washington Post's editorial board writes, "even from this Congress." [from the American Progress Report]