of the george w. bush administration, senator susan collins of maine got a small but significant thing passed into law. if you're a schoolteacher and you buy supplies for the kids in your classes, if before school starts you're out there yourself buying pens and pencils and crayons and craft paper and cle kleenex. you as a teacher can take a deduction on your taxes for up to $250 for those supplies. that was not always the case, but starting in 2002, susan collins of maine made that happen. i mean, it's still weird that we as a country pay teachers very little in term office salary and then on top of that very low pay, we require them to take money out of their own pockets that outfit their classrooms with basic school supplies. thanks to susan collins of maine, after our beleaguered underpaid teachers have to pay for that stuff themselves, they at least can make a note of it when they file their taxes on