Jan. 6--President-elect Barack Obama's aggressive pursuit of middle-class and corporate tax cuts as the core of a $775 billion stimulus package is the right move to combat the most debilitating recession in decades.

This is more than smart politics aimed to attract Republican support in Congress. The tax relief, which reportedly will be about $310 billion of the not-yet-unveiled plan, would put dollars back in the pockets of consumers and businesses. The hope is that companies would hire more workers and that those employees could then afford products and services, giving the economy the jolt needed to avert more layoffs. The plan also will move the administration toward its goal of creating 3 million jobs by 2011.

The tax cut strategy is a win-win: helping distressed families today and laying the groundwork for future economic growth.

Obama's team is still finalizing other parts of the stimulus plan, including aid to state and local governments, public-works projects and investments in energy, infrastructure, health care and education. We'll wait for details, but for now, some of these ideas seem less prudent than the tax cuts. For example, the public works portion probably wouldn't provide a quick economic benefit and could widen the federal budget deficit with little to show in return.

Tax dollars mustn't be squandered on more "bridges to nowhere" and projects that would not provide significant bang for the buck. Together, Obama's proposed stimulus package and the Bush administration's $700 billion financial bailout plan will add more than $1.5 trillion in deficit spending in less than a year. And that's before gargantuan shortfalls in Social Security and Medicare become reality in a few years.

The president-elect is wise to create a federal performance officer to publicly monitor stimulus spending programs, something Congress failed to do last year. Separately, Obama should convene a debt commission to reform entitlement programs and tackle the full scope of the budget problem. Solving today's economic crisis is good news only if it's done without mortgaging the nation's future.

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