House Ways and Means Committee chair Charles Rangel (D-NY) has dropped subtle hints before, as we have noted, that he would consider a compromise on the $8.3 billion tax cut package the Senate attached to the minimum wage bill it passed last week. But speaking to reporters yesterday, Rangel now says he is "prepared to send something over there for [the Senate] to be able to attach a tax package" for the sake of getting the bill to the President's desk. While Rangel did not indicate the nature or scale of what he might send the Senate, he implied it would cost much less than the Senate package, saying: "When we start with $8 billion, my hearing aid is off." He has indicated his sensitivity to the opportunity cost of expensive PAYGO-required offsets to pay for tax cuts, saying earlier that "$8 billion is a lot of money, and the pay-fors--I don't want to lose that either." To illustrate, the biggest offset in the Senate package, closing sale-in-lease-out (SILO) leaseback loophole, where companies purchase assets and lease them back to the prior owner to create a tax deductible loss, adds almost $4.3 billion in revenue over the next five years. Does it make sense from a public interest standpoint to use that offset to purchase additional tax breaks for business, or to spend that money to insure an additional two million children over the next five under the Children's Health Insurance Program? It's not an idle question, since Congress is likely to address the CHIP program shortfall in the President's proposed budget, which would make it impossible to maintain the current number of kids covered under the program and, under PAYGO rules, would need to find a way to pay to make up that shortfall.