There should have never been a tax cut. Period.

The original reason for the Bush $1.9 trillion (subsequently passed as "$1.3 trillion") tax cut was to give back taxpayers some of "their money" that they had overpaid. That was back when analysts and pundits had no end in sight for what the economy could do. Then in late 2000, the reason for the tax cut was to boost the economy. Bush would say anything to get his baby piece of legislation passed, both with the American public and Congress.

Now this column is not a criticism of Bush necessarily. We all know he's not the one driving on the long cross-country trip that is his presidency. Really, all he does is sit in the passenger seat napping, eating trail mix, and occasionally stopping to pee on the side of the road.

This is a criticism of priorities.

Before the economy took a swan dive into the toilet, we had a huge surplus from income, payroll, and other taxes. Bush told us that we could have our cake and eat it, too. He told Congress in February, ''A budget's impact is counted in dollars but measured in lives. Excellent schools, quality health care, a secure retirement, a cleaner environment, a stronger defense - these are all important needs, and we will fund them.'' Guess 2 out of 5 ain't bad. Just sucks that it's not the right two.

In reality, it probably won't even be two. Looks like the Strategic Missile Defense Initiative, or "Star Wars program," will be eating up a huge pile of that money. At $100 million a test, it seems a little excessive considering that the tests are admittedly rigged (Air Force Lt. Gen. Ronald T. Kadish, director of the missile-test organization, acknowledged that we don't yet know how to hit a missile with another missile, let along distinguish enemy warheads from decoys without radio aids) and do nothing but put on a pretty show for the public and the media. All missiles "successively" destroyed so far have had GPS guidance systems installed in them, a luxury that I really doubt Saddam or Kim Jong will be kind enough to install for us. Also, the very missiles Star Wars is designed to protect us from fly end over end rather than the top-like spinning of more advanced warheads. This completely throws off any and all current missile defense strategies currently in the works. Might as well put that money in a pile on the White House lawn and burn it, cause that would be much quicker and have the same result.

Next, there's the issue of that huge, whopping tax cut. Well in reality, it 's neither huge nor whopping unless you happen to be making enough money so that you don't really need it. Oh, and that $300 rebate that you might have gotten in the mail? It's an advance on the tax cut from next year. So if you end up owing, you'll owe $300 more. The IRS had to borrow $51 billion to pay for the tax cut. What happened to having enough money for everything and some to spare? Didn't pan out.

We didn't think that our economy could have slowed down this much. We're in a recession, folks. Several numbers such as unemployment rates tell us this. For the foreseeable future, we probably won't recover much. We should have put most of that money into the other four evenly and come up with ways to actually make stuff happen. And then we should have put a little of that money towards paying down the national debt. But we put the projections way, way before the real numbers came in. But now we don't have any money for any of that because we blew it all on frivolous stuff. Maybe next time, we'll think before pulling out the American Excess card.