Blog: The Fine Print / Revenue & Spending

AMT: Seeking Permanent Reform, Short of Repeal

Mar 7, 2007 by Dana Chasin

At 2 p.m. today, Rep. Richard Neal (D-MA), chair of the House Ways and Means Suncommittee on Select Revenue Measures, holds the first hearing (webcast here) of the 110th Congress on AMT reform, meaning repeal. Currently, the debate about how to keep AMT liability from engulfing the middle class seems to vaccilate between between:
  • the temporary solution -- the hold-harmless-via-patches strategy favored by leading Senate Democrats, who have endorsed a $115 billion, two-year patch for 2007 and 2008

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Watcher: March 6, 2007

Mar 7, 2007 by Matt Lewis

War Spending Keeps Climbing, Says CBO A new round of defense and emergency appropriations will raise the total amount of money spent on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to nearly $750 billion by the end of FY 2008, according to a recent report by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). Congress Set to Consider Largest Supplemental Funding Request in History Congress will soon begin work on the largest supplemental funding bill ever requested — $99.6 billion — to continue to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, along with other items.

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Earmarks: Getting a Read on the House Rules

Mar 6, 2007 by Dana Chasin

According to an article in Roll Call today ($), a new earmark request-and-approval regime in the House is giving rise to a culture of confusion for members and lobbyists alike. The regime is proving to be a far more complex and perilous one than in the past, owing to:
  • ambiguities in the House rules package on earmarks in several areas, including "multi-Member" funding letters supporting for broad or regional requests (which may now count against the earmark limits of each signatory)

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GSA Chief To Testify on More Misdeeds

Mar 6, 2007 by Matt Lewis

GSA Administrator Lurita Doan is in hot water again. Rep. Henry Waxman, Chairman of the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee, has just obtained documents that demonstrate that Doan had a long-standing relationship with a prospecitve recipient of a no-bid contract (the contract was never issued). A Jan. 19 Washington Post story first broke the news that Doan tried to intervene in the contracting-out process on behalf of this friend of hers.

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Senate Approved of Walter Reed Privatization

Mar 6, 2007 by Matt Lewis

GovExec has a good story today on how privatization may have made the situation at Walter Reed even worse. A prolonged public-private competition demoralized staff, nearly 100 of whom quit. On Monday, Weightman said attrition reduced the number of employees affected by the competition from a high of 190 down to about 100 people. He said that despite being given authority to staff up to bridge the gap, he was unable to find more than 10 additional people to take positions not slated to last beyond four months.

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AMT Wonkery

Mar 6, 2007 by Craig Jennings

The Joint Committee on Taxation released a report on the AMT yesterday describing how the AMT works, a brief legislative history, and why it's affecting more and more middle-class tax payers every year. It's really a good primer on the tax.

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IRS Privitization Program on its "Deathbed"

Mar 6, 2007 by Adam Hughes*

At a hearing of the House Appropriations Financial Services and General Government Subcommittee yesterday, Chairman Jose Serrano (D-NY) made some harsh statements about the IRS privitization program that has outsourced some tax collection duties. Serrano said that the program is on its "deathbed" and that the program does not have a lot of supporters in Congress right now. This is certainly welcome news from the appropriations subcommittee chair who has jurisdiction over the IRS. Yet another key voice has chimmed in on this program and the verdict is not good.

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Baucus, Conrad Support 2-Year AMT Patch; Rangel, Neal Embrace Repeal

Mar 5, 2007 by Dana Chasin

Senate Finance Committee chair Max Baucus (D-MT) has abandoned his support of full AMT repeal and joined with Senate Budget chair Kent Conrad (D-ND) in favor of a two-year AMT patch. Their position is already "http://public.cq.com/docs/cqt/news110-000002458033.html" target="_blank">part of a Senate bill (S. 619) introduced by Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) along with nine co-sponsors. The proposal would cost more than $90 billion over 10 years, but nobody has said yet how or even if it would be offset.

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Walker, Budget Nutcase

Mar 5, 2007 by Matt Lewis

GAO Chief David Walker showed up on 60 Minutes yesterday. Dean Baker has a nice takedown of what he said. I accuse him of three more errors against entitlements and the long-term fiscal imbalance. First, he limits options for policy solutions: So where's that money going to come from? "Well it's gonna come from additional taxes, or it's gonna come from restructuring these promises, or it's gonna come from cutting other spending," Walker says. What about reforming the private health care system- the source of the problem? Second, he distorts the opposition's beliefs:

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CBO Estimates Bush Budget Fails to Balance in 2012

Mar 2, 2007 by Dana Chasin

Administration projections that its FY 2008 federal budget proposal would yield a surplus by FY 2012 were contradicted today by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) scoring of the President's plan. The bottom lines:
  • the Bush budget will fail to balance in 2012 by $9 billion (see Table 1); CBO's estimate projects $119 billion less in revenues in 2012 than does OMB's
  • domestic discretionary spending for FY 2008 is scored at $932 billion (Table 4), up from the President's proposed $928.9 cap

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