The Washington Post had an article on the tax cuts that are presently being proposed, complete with a handy chart.

How much would you save under the plan?

Income, in 2005 dollars | Average tax saving
------------------------|-------------------
_ $10,000-20,000 ______ | _ $2 _____________
_ $20,000-30,000 ______ | _ 9 ______________
_ $30,000-40,000 ______ | _ 16 _____________
_ $40,000-50,000 ______ | _ 46 _____________
_ $50,000-75,000 ______ | _ 110 ____________
_ $75,000-100,000 _____ | _ 403 ____________
_ $100,000-200,000 ____ | _ 1,338 __________
_ $200,000-500,000 ____ | _ 4,499 __________
_ $500,000-1 million __ | _ 5,562 __________
_ More than 1 million _ | _ 41,977 _________

Source: Tax Policy Center

So, if we consider the average American, who makes $43,000 or whereabouts, $46 represents a tax break of about 0.1%. (Much less if your income is lower.) But according to the Washington Post, the cost of this package will total $69 billion, or about 0.6% of our $11.75 billion GDP. The reason? Most of these tax cuts are for the wealthy, rather than the average American.

If someone gave you the opportunity for instance to spend all of the money locked in your 401K, now, however you wanted to - with the catch that you'd lose 5/6 of it - you'd say that would be a very bad deal. Well that's exactly what's happening here. I honestly can't speak to the motivations of whoever's behind this, all I can say is that it's simply bad public policy.