Just in case you didn't have a clue who George W. Bush's friends are, a peek into the recent enforcement actions and inactions of the Internal Revenue Service will offer some guidance on this matter.

Item. While the number of tax returns filed each year has grown by 12 percent in the past decade, the number of agents able to conduct face-to-face audits of taxpayer returns has fallen by 25 percent, from 16,000 to 12,000. Moreover, according to data collected and analyzed by a tax watchdog group at Syracuse University, the targets of these audits tend not to be large corporations and the wealthy but the proverbial "little guy."

Item. Recently, the IRS announced it was beefing up its audits of those claiming the earned-income tax credit (EITC), which supplements the salaries of low-income workers. To be eligible for this program, your household income may not exceed $35,000. To add insult to injury, as many as 9 million low-income workers are excluded from the President's proposed $725 billion tax relief package pending in Congress. In other words, the President is excluding from the tax cut those most likely to provide stimulus to the economy by spending any additional income they receive.

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