Blog: The Fine Print / Revenue & Spending

Collender: WH Balanced Budget Bid a PR Ploy

Jan 9, 2007 by Dana Chasin

We commend to readers today's National Journal article by Stan Collender entitled "Budget Debate Gets Off to a Bad Start," which succintly reprises the charade involved in President Bush's pledge last week to balance the federal budget by 2012. It is reproduced in full below: The FY08 debate got off to the worst possible start last week when President Bush announced he was going to balance the budget by 2012. Pledging to balance the federal budget in five years is a tried-and-true White House public relations ploy. That is the case here as well: The short-term deficit likely will be rising, with the FY07 and FY08 deficits higher than what occurred in FY06.

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Taxpayer Advocate Says AMT Top Priority

Jan 9, 2007 by Matt Lewis

The taxpayer advocate service (TAS), an independent office within the IRS, put out the taxpayer advocate's annual report to Congress today (click here for the executive summary). The TAS decided that the most important issues facing taxpayers this year is the alternative minimum tax, followed by the "tax gap." Its top legislative priorities: creating a special procedure for IRS appropriations, and repealing the IRS privatization program. There's a summary of the top legislative priorities after the break.

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Pelosi Pellucid: Tax Hike for the Wealthy on the Table

Jan 9, 2007 by Dana Chasin

The Democrats are at great pains not to confirm the hysterical GOP midterm warnings that Pelosi & Co. would tax-and-spend like there was no yesterday. But commentators like Robert Kuttner and Paul Krugman, and others have urged a re-examination of ways to raise revenue for domestic needs Democrats have promised to address, raising the dread specter of tax increases. To the surprise of many, Nancy Pelosi declared on CBS's "Face the Nation" on Sunday that she too is considering raising revenue by repealing tax cuts on taxpayers making over $500,000 a year:

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CBO Reports Lower Deficit

Jan 9, 2007 by Matt Lewis

CBO has released the budget numbers for the first quarter of fiscal year 2007. The deficit was $85 billion, $35 billion less than the first quarter of last fiscal year. Temporary events, not structural factors, mostly explain the difference between this year and last. Hurricane Katrina drove up federal spending last year, and record corporate profits and big gains for high-earners have been pushing up revenues this year, though most analysts expect that surge to end soon. House Budget Chairman Rep. John Spratt (D-SC) commented on the news in CQ ($).

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2001 Tax Cuts' Passage Relied on AMT Revenue Increase

Jan 8, 2007 by Craig Jennings

Prompted by Sen. Charles Grassley’s (R-IA) comments on Friday, I started digging into past political debates in LexisNexis about the AMT, and I came across this Washington Post article from May 27, 2001*. Written just a few days after the Senate passed its version of the $1.35 trillion 2001 Bush tax cuts, this excerpt indicates it was pretty clear then that the 2001 tax cuts had set up an AMT debacle that Congress will have to face in the coming years.

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Stating The Obvious

Jan 8, 2007 by Matt Lewis

Today, the NYT reminds us that the tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 disproportionately benefited the wealthy over the middle class, the super wealthy over the wealthy, and the wealthy-beyond-your-imagination over the super wealthy.

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Mallaby: AMT - Mend It, Don't End It

Jan 8, 2007 by Craig Jennings

Sebastian Mallaby expresses some sensible thoughts on Sen. Max Baucus’s (D-MT) recent declaration of his desire to repeal the alternative minimum tax (AMT): [A] prescription so fiscally crazy that not even the Bush administration supports it. Indeed. Mallaby goes on to suggest a permanent AMT fix - in whatever form it may take - could be used as a chip to sweeten any future revenue-generation package, and Baucaus would be wasting this opportunity. But, more importantly, Mallaby also makes the case that a repeal of the AMT is highly undesirable for two very important reasons:

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    House Passes PAYGO and Earmark Disclosure Rules

    Jan 5, 2007 by Adam Hughes*

    By a 280-152 vote earlier this afternoon, the House adopted the civility and fiscal responsibility titles of Speaker Pelosi's internal rules package. Lobby and ethics reform titles were adopted yesterday.
    • Conference Committee and Voting Time Rules: require that 48 hours notice of meetings be provided to ensure member attendance, making sure information is available to all conferees, and barring conference report text changes after members have signed the report.

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    House Adopts Lobby and Ethics Reform Package

    Jan 5, 2007 by Dana Chasin

    In the first legislative act of the 110th Congress, the House adopted an initial set of "honest leadership" rules changes yesterday by a vote of 430-1. A floor vote on a second set of rules changes, covering "civility and fiscal responsibility," is expected today. Yesterday's package of rules changes provides the following:

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    Grassley: AMT Not Meant to Generate Revenue

    Jan 5, 2007 by Craig Jennings

    BNA ($): Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and ranking Republican Charles Grassley (Iowa) Jan. 4 introduced a bill (S. 55) to eliminate the individual alternative minimum tax. This move is not unexpected. Baucus and Grassley have been clamoring for AMT repeal for years, but I choked on my waffle this morning when I got to this bit: Grassley has adamantly maintained that the cost of lost revenues from preventing the AMT from further creeping into the middle class should not be offset, given that the revenue was never meant to be collected in the first place.

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