Taking a first swing at knocking down “the toll booth on the road to the middle class” — President George W. Bush’s words — Bush today sent his 10-year, $1.6 trillion tax cut proposal to a divided Congress. The tax relief package, the largest in two decades, has met with skepticism from opposition Democrats, who say it’s too big, and with undisguised glee from some of Bush’s Republican colleagues, who say it could be even bigger. Democrats contend most of the dollars in Bush’s tax cut go to the wealthiest Americans, and propose instead between $750 and $900 billion in tax cuts targeted at the neediest. Working to slow the tax train that left the station last week when the Congressional Budget Office estimated a federal government surplus of $5.6 trillion over the next decade, $1 trillion more than previously anticipated, Democrats argue that Bush’s cut will deplete the nation’s coffers. A New York Democrat, Michael McNulty, said, “The last time I saw a tax cut of this size coupled with proposals for significant increases in defense spending was 20 years ago in the first term of Ronald Reagan.”