President Bush signed into law a tax cut that he sold to the American people in a fundamentally dishonest manner.

The merits of the plan itself are debatable, but the far more troubling aspect of the debate is the utter contempt for the truth the president's arguments have demonstrated. The president repeatedly stated as fact that his tax cut would both stimulate the short-term economy and create 1.4 million jobs.

There is little basis in fact for either claim. Claiming the tax cut will create 1.4 million jobs seems to be just the latest example of bad math from this administration. As far as I can tell, not a single independent economist agrees with the White House's assertion that the tax cut will create 1.4 million jobs.

The plan will cut taxes primarily for Americans who make more than $150,000 a year. What those Americans will do with this extra money is anybody's guess. They might invest it in ventures that create jobs here in the United States or they might invest in other countries, or they might just use it to pay off existing debts or simply put it in the bank. Considerable evidence exists that investors are not even spending money they already have. Cash holdings among investors are at record high levels because of the uncertainty in our economy.

Putting more money in the hands of those investors will not necessarily reduce that uncertainty. It clearly does not guarantee the creation of jobs, much less exactly 1.4 million jobs as the president has repeatedly claimed.

The president's claim that his tax cut will stimulate the economy in the short term has no more credibility, as the tax cut proposed is phased in over nearly a decade. Of the original $750 billion over 10 years in tax cuts the president proposed, only $75 billion would occur in the first year. This leads to two conclusions.

• This tax cut will not stimulate our economy in the short term; $75 billion in a $10 trillion economy is a drop in the ocean. And that makes the above described assumption that the people who get the money will spend it to create jobs in this country.
• Since most of this tax cut will play out over the next six to eight years, it obviously must be about something other than creating jobs and stimulating the economy in the short-term.

 Why won't President Bush tell us, in the honest, straightforward manner he claims to love, what that something else is?

The answer is that he and his advisers know the public right now cares most about jobs and our stagnant economy. Claiming his tax-cut package will address these issues is a lot more likely to build support than making the case for a long-term, substantial supply-side tax cut aimed at putting more money in the hands of mostly well-off Americans, and dramatically reducing the federal government's capacity to spend money on other programs.

This latter argument would require the president to deal with questions about how such a tax cut will impact our national debt, and what it might do to our ability to do such new spending programs as a massive increase in defense spending and a prescription drug benefit - programs the president also claims to support.

There is also the overriding question of whether or not the best use of scarce tax dollars is to put more money in the hands of relatively well-off people.

At a time when our nation would greatly benefit from that kind of honest, robust debate about federal spending and tax policy, President Bush has cynically tried to claim his tax cut is something it clearly is not.

I am not averse to supporting President Bush when I agree with him. I supported the war in Iraq, the bill to give the president Trade Promotional Authority and his Patients' Bill of Rights, among other issues. My comments, therefore, are not the knee-jerk reaction of someone who never supports the president for partisan reasons. I simply abhor the dishonesty behind his arguments for this tax cut.

If the tax cut is the right thing to do, the facts should make the case. But the fact that the president has to be dishonest to sell his proposal is the clearest evidence that this tax cut is not in the best interests of our nation.

Democrat Adam Smith represents Washington's 9th Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives.