Thursday, July 15, 2004

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has issued a four-page report criticizing Republican efforts to extend various expiring tax cuts without paying for them. According to the accompanying press release:

Spurred by a White House meeting on July 7, Republican leaders in Congress are reportedly planning to use an unusual strategy to extend certain tax cuts without paying for them. The strategy is to adopt these policies by reviving a moribund conference committee on a largely unrelated bill and attaching the tax-cut extensions to a “conference report” on that bill, thereby bypassing normal consideration in the Senate Finance Committee and on the Senate floor of whether the tax-cut extensions should be paid for. This gambit is designed to force a single up-or-down vote on a conference report that would consist primarily of tax-cut extensions the Senate has not previously considered. Those who vote against the conference report would likely be attacked as favoring “tax increases” on middle-class families, despite the fact that nearly all Senators and Congressmen who voted “no” would favor legislation to extend these tax cuts and offset the costs of doing so.

(Thanks to Donald Tobin (Ohio State) for the tip.)