Fiscal Future Daily: Charity, Austerity, and Keeping the Government’s Doors Open
Now that the bipartisan compromise on the Bush tax cuts is passed, Congress is faced with the basic task of approving a spending bill to keep the government running. The current plan is for Congress to pass a bill that only keeps the government’s doors open until March, when it’s likely that a combination spending [...]
Fiscal Future Daily: One Last Shot at the Estate Tax, and a Vote in the House on the Tax Plan
The House gets the final say on the tax compromise today, after the Senate passed it yesterday. A group of House members have introduced an amendment to eliminate the payroll tax holiday, fearing the long-term implications for Social Security, but the core of the fight will be over the estate tax. But generally speaking, the [...]
Fiscal Future Daily: A Couple of Shots Across the Bow, One Last Round of Earmarks, and, Maybe, a Vote
The Senate may actually have a final vote on the tax plan today, amid signs that the House Democrats may, very reluctantly, go along. Passing the $858 billion tax plan may help spur the economy, but it won’t help the deficit and rising national debt at all. The Congressional Budget Office reported this morning that [...]
Fiscal Future Daily: The Wheels Grind Slowly, Conservatives Strike Back, and What the Public Thinks
One of the things that makes the Washington budget hard to follow is that there are multiple procedural votes, any one of which can hamper a plan, well before anything actually becomes final. The tax cut compromise is like that, getting past a Senate vote yesterday and facing another today. The consensus seems to be [...]
Fiscal Future Daily: Facing the First Vote, What We Get for $858 Billion and Three Points on the Payroll Tax Holiday
Sen. Bernie Sanders became social-media sensation with his eight-hour speech against the tax cut deal, but the real action may happen today when the Senate is expected to actually vote on the plan. There’s fierce debate over whether the tax cuts, which will run up the national debt by $858 billion, will actually speed up [...]
Fiscal Future Daily: Getting the Picture on the Tax Deal; House Democrats Insist on Changes
The Senate may start debate on the tax compromise plan today, as the White House tries hard to push the plan and the House Democrats say it shouldn’t even be voted on as is. From the public’s perspective, the most useful development may be that lots of news organizations and other groups are updating their [...]
Fiscal Future Daily: The Real Deal? And Figuring Out What it Really Means for the Economy and the Deficit
Most of the budget news coverage today is about the bitter divide between President Obama and Congressional Democrats, which is providing plenty of media fodder with rhetoric over “purity” versus “failure to fight.” But we’re also starting to see serious and useful analysis of the deal itself: what it does, and what it won’t do, [...]
The Tax Deal: Better Than Nothing, Better Than Expected, or Better Off Dead?
The White House and congressional Republicans have brokered a deal on the Bush tax cuts, a bargain that’s likely to add $900 billion to the deficit over the next two years. Some commentators (particularly those who wanted the tax cuts to expire, at least for the wealthy) are furious over the deal; while others seem [...]
Fiscal Future Daily: Punt! The Bush Tax Cuts Are Likely to Stay, But For How Long?
The big budget news over the weekend was the emerging deal over the extending the Bush tax cuts: a short-term extension (one, two or three years, the details are probably being hammered out as you read this) in exchange for also extending unemployment benefits for about two million people. It’s bipartisanship, certainly, and it’s stimulus [...]
Fiscal Future Daily: The Two-Track Deficit Debate
We’ve got a two-track deficit debate going on today: on one front, the co-chairmen of the presidential fiscal commission are trying to get enough votes to get their plan passed by the full commission on Friday. On another, Congress and the White House are trying to hammer out a deal on the Bush tax cuts. [...]