{"id":7171,"date":"2006-04-18T13:14:30","date_gmt":"2006-04-18T17:14:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=7171"},"modified":"2006-04-18T13:14:30","modified_gmt":"2006-04-18T17:14:30","slug":"that-pesky-sunset-clause","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/that-pesky-sunset-clause\/","title":{"rendered":"That pesky ‘sunset’ clause"},"content":{"rendered":"

The far-right [tag]Washington Times[\/tag] had an otherwise skip-able article today about the White House staff, but there was one key gem<\/a> in the piece that warrants attention.<\/p>\n

Mr. Bolten joined Mr. Bush and other administration officials, including Treasury Secretary John W. Snow, yesterday at a business round table in Sterling.<\/p>\n

Mr. Bush used the occasion of tax day, the due date for federal income taxes, to urge that his [tag]tax cuts[\/tag] be made permanent. Because of Senate rules, many provisions are scheduled to [tag]expire[\/tag] after 10 years.<\/p>\n

“It’s tax day, and it’s a day to recommit ourselves to low taxes,” he said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Tax cuts are scheduled to expire after 10 years “because of Senate rules”? Even by the Washington Times’ standards, this is absurd. The tax cuts are set to expire, not because of a procedural detail, but because Republicans on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue designed them that way.<\/p>\n

As Paul Krugman explained<\/a> three years ago:<\/p>\n

[I]n 2001, as now, some swing senators insisted on a budget resolution limiting the size of any tax cut. No problem. House-Senate negotiators pushed through a huge tax cut anyway, “saving” several hundred billion dollars by making the whole thing expire in the 10th year. Among other things, this “sunset clause” implied that heirs to large estates would pay no tax if their parents died in 2010, but would face significant taxes if their parents made it into 2011. At the time I suggested that it be renamed the Throw Momma from the Train Act of 2001.<\/p>\n

Needless to say, the bill was silly by design. The administration didn’t intend to compromise: it fully expected to get the sunset clause repealed in a future Congress. And President Bush was soon out there ridiculing the way the tax cut was programmed to expire, implying that the expiration date was imposed by scheming liberals, when in fact it was a trick perpetrated by his own Congressional allies.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Of course, the Times no doubt received its spin from its Republican allies, which suggests this is likely to be a regular GOP talking point. Like far too many of their claims, this is completely false.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The far-right [tag]Washington Times[\/tag] had an otherwise skip-able article today about the White House staff, but there was one key gem in the piece that warrants attention. Mr. Bolten joined Mr. Bush and other administration officials, including Treasury Secretary John W. Snow, yesterday at a business round table in Sterling. Mr. Bush used the occasion […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7171","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7171","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\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7171"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7171\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}