{"id":1541,"date":"2004-04-07T12:00:52","date_gmt":"2004-04-07T17:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/1541.html"},"modified":"2004-04-07T12:00:52","modified_gmt":"2004-04-07T17:00:52","slug":"leaving-no-corporate-tax-break-behind","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/leaving-no-corporate-tax-break-behind\/","title":{"rendered":"Leaving no corporate tax break behind"},"content":{"rendered":"

Everyone needs a champion in Congress, fighting for their interests. The House Republican caucus has made it clear that they will take a back seat to no one in standing up for a cause they deeply believe in: more corporate tax breaks<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The recent congressional fight over a massive federal transportation bill generally focused on which part of the government wanted to spend the most — the House, the Senate, or the White House. But while lawmakers were squabbling over whether to exceed Bush’s arbitrary spending limits, GOP leaders were looking out, as usual, for their favorite constituency.<\/p>\n

House Republicans, under fire from the White House for writing a multi-year transportation bill that exceeded President Bush’s spending limits, quietly tucked billons of dollars worth of new tax breaks for business into the same bill shortly before the House passed it overwhelmingly last week.<\/p>\n

The tax provisions, which were added just before the bill went to the floor on Friday, provide relief to big companies from the alternative minimum tax (AMT). They increase from $25,000 to $100,000 the amount of capital improvements — including investments in computer software — that businesses can write off as annual expenses.<\/p>\n

The corporate AMT, which was enacted as part of a broad 1986 tax reform, is intended to ensure that all corporations — even those with extensive deductions — pay some taxes. However, softening the impact of that law has been a top priority for some of the nation’s biggest companies, including auto manufacturers and computer firms.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And a top priority, apparently, for the GOP.
\n<\/p>\n

Among other things, the changes approved by the House would allow multinational companies with extensive offshore operations to fully use foreign tax credits to offset their tax liability.<\/p>\n

Lobbyists for small-business groups had fought for the expanded write-off provisions, which would allow a company to deduct the costs of certain improvements and equipment in a single year rather than depreciate them over a number of years.<\/p>\n

The combined five-year cost of the new tax breaks would be $12.8 billion, according to Congress’s Joint Committee on Taxation.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Now might be a convenient time to point out that Republican leaders in Congress, specifically Tom DeLay, fought and ultimately killed a provision last year that would have expanded Bush’s tax cuts to families with incomes between $10,500 and $26,625, who would otherwise get zero<\/i> new breaks from the tax plan. The cost of the Dems’ plan? $3.5 billion<\/a>.<\/p>\n

So when Dems want to cut taxes for low-income families, $3.5 billion is too much to ask. When the GOP wants to cut taxes for multinational corporations, $12.8 billion is not only reasonable, it has to quietly be shoved into the legislation before anyone catches on.<\/p>\n

The kind of classy, above-board politics we’ve come to expect from DeLay and his cohorts.<\/p>\n

While the GOP leadership’s staunch advocacy on behalf of more corporate tax breaks (on top of the ones already passed in recent years) demonstrates the party’s true priorities, there’s also the issue of keeping their efforts secret — not only from the public, but also from their fellow lawmakers.<\/p>\n

[I]t was unclear whether many House members were aware they were voting on the business tax breaks when they approved the $275 billion, six-year transportation bill by a vote of 357 to 65. The tax breaks are unrelated to the transportation measure, which funds new highways, mass transit and safety programs. <\/p>\n

The House Rules Committee, which reflects the policy of the House Republican leadership, ordered that the tax provisions be included in the overall bill and adopted without a separate vote.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’ve lost count of how many times the GOP legislative agenda has relied on stealth, deception, and misdirection in order to succeed. It speaks volumes about the merit of their ideas.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Everyone needs a champion in Congress, fighting for their interests. The House Republican caucus has made it clear that they will take a back seat to no one in standing up for a cause they deeply believe in: more corporate tax breaks. The recent congressional fight over a massive federal transportation bill generally focused on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1541","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1541","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1541"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1541\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}