The statistics that President Bush and his allies use to promote his tax-cut plan are accurate, but many of them present only part of the picture.

For instance, in a speech in Georgia last week, the president asserted that under his proposal, 92 million Americans would receive an average tax reduction of $1,083....

No one disputes the size of the average tax reduction, ...But this is what the president did not say: Half of all income-tax payers would have their taxes cut by less than $100; 78 percent would get reductions of less than $1,000.

The average tax cut (the total amount of revenue lost divided by the total number of tax returns) is over $1,000 because a few rich taxpayers would get such large reductions. For households with incomes over $200,000, the average cut would be $12,496, and the average for those with incomes over $1 million would be $90,222.

Some Bush backers claim he's not a liar, he's just not very bright and doesn't remember things very well. That may be true, but we're sure Bush would not allow such an excuse in his "responsibility era." We're sure Bush would agree that if he's that dumb, he shouldn't be President. Other Bush backers claim that some of his lies are "technically correct" or "tailored to fit the audience," or some such circumlocution. What they're talking about are lies of omission rather than lies of commission. In lies of omission it's what they imply, not what they say. For example, the other evening Bush told Congress and the American people that he was putting a "lock box" on Social Security. Now, it's very clear that Bush wanted us to feel secure in the belief that he was protecting all of our Social Security funds for the future. No question, right? Yet, the very next day when his budget book was released, we learned that Bush told a lie of omission. What he didn't tell Congress and the American people is that he would later take from $.6 to $1 trillion out of that "lock box" to cover his tax cuts. No doubt, Bush lied. He wanted folks to believe something that he knew was not true. Of course, politicians do this all the time. It's second nature. In sum, the thing that really bothers us about Bush's lies is that he is also a hypocrite and pretends he's above lying. As a liar, he reinforces our assumptions about politicians. As a hypocrite, he reinforces our assumptions about his character.