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For most of the year, Washington is overrun with deficit hysteria, but right now is that special, magical time of the year. No I’m not talking about Christmas! I’m talking about the joyous season of the January 1 scheduled end of temporary tax provisions that would increase rates for the ultra wealthy and end select corporate welfare programs!
Joyous for lobbyists, at least.
With Republicans desperate to keep taxes low for the very wealthy and Obama adding a temporary extension of unemployment benefits as just enough sugar to convince Democrats they need to swallow it, we suddenly have a massive deficit-increasing bill, and none of the so-called “deficit hawks” seem to care about the price tag. As a result, it appears they are taking this moment to load the bill with as many deficit-enhancing “temporary” tax credit extensions as possible.
Truly, it is a Christmas scheduled-end-of-certain-tax-provisions season miracle! All year, the deficit hawks rejected worthy programs to help people in this horrible economy because we supposedly couldn’t afford them, but with rich people about to pay more and corporate welfare programs set to expire, the deficit hawks’ icy hearts were melted by the sad, puppy-dog look on the faces of corporate CEOs about to see a four percent marginal rate increase.
Magically, all the deficit hawks were transformed by the scheduled-end-of-certain-tax-provisions season spirit. Now their deficit-spending generosity knows no bounds with this $857 billion piece of legislation. The mantra that everything must be paid for, which all year they applied to programs meant to help the working class, has instantly changed to “if you are going to spend, spend big!” Let no tax extension provision be left out.
Below is the bill index, and, as you can see, it contains critical elements like a huge, wasteful ethanol subsidy, a $68 billion reduction in the estate tax that benefits only the wealthiest 0.1 percent of the country, and of course the important “Temporary increase in limit on cover over of rum excise taxes to Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.”
TITLE I—TEMPORARY EXTENSION OF TAX RELIEF
Sec. 101. Temporary extension of 2001 tax relief.
Sec. 102. Temporary extension of 2003 tax relief.
Sec. 103. Temporary extension of 2009 tax relief.
TITLE II—TEMPORARY EXTENSION OF INDIVIDUAL AMT RELIEF
Sec. 201. Temporary extension of increased alternative minimum tax exemption amount.
Sec. 202. Temporary extension of alternative minimum tax relief for nonrefundable personal credits.
TITLE III—TEMPORARY ESTATE TAX RELIEF
Sec. 301. Reinstatement of estate tax; repeal of carryover basis.
Sec. 302. Modifications to estate, gift, and generation-skipping transfer taxes.
Sec. 303. Applicable exclusion amount increased by unused exclusion amount of deceased spouse.
Sec. 304. Application of EGTRRA sunset to this title.
TITLE IV—TEMPORARY EXTENSION OF INVESTMENT INCENTIVES
Sec. 401. Extension of bonus depreciation; temporary 100 percent expensing
for certain business assets.
Sec. 402. Temporary extension of increased small business expensing.
TITLE V—TEMPORARY EXTENSION OF UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE AND RELATED MATTERS
Sec. 501. Temporary extension of unemployment insurance provisions.
Sec. 502. Temporary modification of indicators under the extended benefit program.
Sec. 503. Technical amendment relating to collection of unemployment compensation debts.
Sec. 504. Technical correction relating to repeal of continued dumping and subsidy offset.
Sec. 505. Additional extended unemployment benefits under the Railroad Unemployment Insurance Act.
TITLE VI—TEMPORARY EMPLOYEE PAYROLL TAX CUT
Sec. 601. Temporary employee payroll tax cut.
TITLE VII—TEMPORARY EXTENSION OF CERTAIN EXPIRING PROVISIONS
Subtitle A—Energy
Sec. 701. Incentives for biodiesel and renewable diesel.
Sec. 702. Credit for refined coal facilities.
Sec. 703. New energy efficient home credit.
Sec. 704. Excise tax credits and outlay payments for alternative fuel and alternative fuel mixtures.
Sec. 705. Special rule for sales or dispositions to implement FERC or State electric restructuring policy for qualified electric utilities.
Sec. 706. Suspension of limitation on percentage depletion for oil and gas from marginal wells.
Sec. 707. Extension of grants for specified energy property in lieu of tax credits.
Sec. 708. Extension of provisions related to alcohol used as fuel.
Sec. 709. Energy efficient appliance credit.
Sec. 710. Credit for nonbusiness energy property.
Sec. 711. Alternative fuel vehicle refueling property.
Subtitle B—Individual Tax Relief
Sec. 721. Deduction for certain expenses of elementary and secondary school teachers.
Sec. 722. Deduction of State and local sales taxes.
Sec. 723. Contributions of capital gain real property made for conservation purposes.
Sec. 724. Above-the-line deduction for qualified tuition and related expenses.
Sec. 725. Tax-free distributions from individual retirement plans for charitable purposes.
Sec. 726. Look-thru of certain regulated investment company stock in determining gross estate of nonresidents.
Sec. 727. Parity for exclusion from income for employer-provided mass transit and parking benefits.
Sec. 728. Refunds disregarded in the administration of Federal programs and federally assisted programs.
Subtitle C—Business Tax Relief
Sec. 731. Research credit.
Sec. 732. Indian employment tax credit.
Sec. 733. New markets tax credit.
Sec. 734. Railroad track maintenance credit.
Sec. 735. Mine rescue team training credit.
Sec. 736. Employer wage credit for employees who are active duty members of the uniformed services.
Sec. 737. 15-year straight-line cost recovery for qualified leasehold improvements, qualified restaurant buildings and improvements, and qualified retail improvements.
Sec. 738. 7-year recovery period for motorsports entertainment complexes.
Sec. 739. Accelerated depreciation for business property on an Indian reservation.
Sec. 740. Enhanced charitable deduction for contributions of food inventory.
Sec. 741. Enhanced charitable deduction for contributions of book inventories to public schools.
Sec. 742. Enhanced charitable deduction for corporate contributions of computer inventory for educational purposes.
Sec. 743. Election to expense mine safety equipment.
Sec. 744. Special expensing rules for certain film and television productions.
Sec. 745. Expensing of environmental remediation costs.
Sec. 746. Deduction allowable with respect to income attributable to domestic
production activities in Puerto Rico.
Sec. 747. Modification of tax treatment of certain payments to controlling exempt organizations.
Sec. 748. Treatment of certain dividends of regulated investment companies.
Sec. 749. RIC qualified investment entity treatment under FIRPTA.
Sec. 750. Exceptions for active financing income.
Sec. 751. Look-thru treatment of payments between related controlled foreign
corporations under foreign personal holding company rules.
Sec. 752. Basis adjustment to stock of S corps making charitable contributions of property.
Sec. 753. Empowerment zone tax incentives.
Sec. 754. Tax incentives for investment in the District of Columbia.
Sec. 755. Temporary increase in limit on cover over of rum excise taxes to
Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.
Sec. 756. American Samoa economic development credit.
Sec. 757. Work opportunity credit.
Sec. 758. Qualified zone academy bonds.
Sec. 759. Mortgage insurance premiums.
Sec. 760. Temporary exclusion of 100 percent of gain on certain small business stock.
Subtitle D—Temporary Disaster Relief Provisions
SUBPART A—NEW YORK LIBERTY ZONE
Sec. 761. Tax-exempt bond financing.
SUBPART B—GO ZONE
Sec. 762. Increase in rehabilitation credit.
Sec. 763. Low-income housing credit rules for buildings in GO zones.
Sec. 764. Tax-exempt bond financing.
Sec. 765. Bonus depreciation deduction applicable to the GO Zone.
TITLE VIII—BUDGETARY PROVISIONS
Sec. 801. Determination of budgetary effects.
Sec. 802. Emergency designations.
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All the sparkly ornaments make it light up like a Christmas Tree.
Two words:
Greedy Bastards
Two more words:
Morally Bankrupt
I just learned about this.
The ALTERNATIVE TO PAYPAL that accepts donations to Wikileaks:
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Bullshit. Not for the 99ers, the ones who most need help in this joke of a country. Throw billions at the people who already control most of the wealth in this country but zero to people who have no income and no fucking job possibilities? That’s not the country I was taught about when I was in school and that’s not the country that these people like to blather on about. I guess the 99ers are off everybody’s radar again.
Ever notice a bully stopped bulling when someone says “can’t we all just get along”?
The only moral response to the this situation is to let everything expire and let the GOP extend unemployment – or be known as the ones that allowed others to starve. And let the GOP destroy the deficit via tax cuts.
The game is what you concede is mine but what I compromised on we will discuss in a year. Did these Dems ever have to deal with school yard bullies? – Did Obama? 2 year extension on what the GOP wants – one year life for the programs the Dems want – and no one thinks this is a disaster?
Margaret, you can keep attention on it by posting a diary, you’re good at that.
I don’t understand. If they’re sweating bullets over the deficit, why is the $3 billion dollars a week that’s being pissed down the two clusterfuck urinals off the table?
Teacher says – everytime a session bell rings, an oligarch gets his wings !
I was talking with a tea partier today and decided I felt like living dangerously so I brought up politics. He started talking about unemployment insurance and how it was ridiculous that they were now going try to add more time to it. He didn’t understand that the current legislation is just to fund those who haven’t exhausted the 99 weeks yet. I wonder how many more people are under similar misapprehensions? Of course, he also felt that unemployment just made it easy for people to be picky about jobs and that cutting it would motivate people to go back to work. We didn’t have time to begin to argue that one out. I was just pleased I was able to explain about the 99ers.
Or as the banksters like to call us: moral hazards
“Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.”
H. L. Mencken (1880 – 1956)
And, here I always thought a lump of coal was a bad thing for Xmas.
Strangely, no mention of Victory Gin.
At the mid-terms, Obama went out amongst the people and told them the repugs shouldn’t be given the keys to the car because they didn’t know how to drive. Well, that didn’t work. Turns out that wasn’t a car he’s driving but a stripped down motor scooter (no public option). Obama comes back to WDC shellacked — he gotta get him some new wheels, so he does a meeting with the Chamber of Commerce and asks them what he has to do to get them to stop calling him a socialist; he does a meeting with Jamie Dimon, the bankster from JPM-Chase and asks what he has to do to get the banksters to really really love him more; this afternoon he does a meeting with Bill Clinton to ask how he can dump his base and steer right. The Chamber tells him to cut taxes for the rich and raise them for the poor; Jamie tells him to let the banks rip off the public like the good old days; and Clinton tells him to pick a fight with the base and hope they will scream and yell and jump up and down so the teabaggers will know that he is actually one of them afterall. However, there is no one to call to figure out how to get the dems and repugs to vote for him in 2012 — ain’t gonna happen.
Deadline is getting close for Congress to adjourn and they definitely want this in their stocking because the Rs know that they will never get it passed next year with it hanging on their head.
Way to go Obama, give them everything they want and next year you will get the lump of coal from the Republicans and you can take that to the bank.
They would have to get multiple christmas stockings to fill up that list!
That’s shameful.
lump of coal
Oh yeah, that reminds me, no carbon tax! Oh wait, taxes mean revenue, and that would have meant passing climate change with a filibuster proof reconciliation bill. I sound like a broken record for harping on the importance of framing as much reform as possible as tax policy, you only need 50 votes to pass and not 60. In fact, a couple of Republicans (and a Democrat) offered a revenue-neutral carbon tax bill last year.
“I can understand why Ed Markey would be frustrated by somebody like me,” the Republican [Bob Inglis] said about the Democratic Massachusetts representative in an interview with SolveClimate News. After all, “cap and trade is a market-based, conservative concept.”
“But over the years, I’ve committed various heresies against Republicans. The one that’s most enduring is saying that climate change is real and let’s do something about it.”
All that said, the cage rattler is understandably irked that his bipartisan bill touting a carbon tax as an efficient solution to global warming winked out without even one congressional hearing. That can be attributed to Republicans amplifying their climate denier rhetoric and Democrats clinging to cap and trade as the sole possible solution.
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUS286690080020101208
Budget hawks are by no means in lockstep on this bill. We should give credit where it’s due.
http://www.redstate.com/erick/2010/12/10/the-tax-compromise-must-now-die/