The Senate finally passed a 30-day extension of unemployment insurance and health care benefits for the unemployed, but not before benefits had expired for hundreds of thousands of jobless Americans and thousands of others were furloughed from construction jobs as federal funding expired.  The legislation had been held up by Senator Jim Bunning (R-KY) who wanted to offset the costs of the bill, while other Republican Senators threatened to block the bill if they were not promised a vote on a measure to reduce the estate tax for millionaires. 
 
The President signed the 30-day extension into law on Tuesday evening, just hours after the bill had passed.

Senators then returned to legislation extending jobless benefits, as well as many expiring tax provisions, through the end of the year. The Senate took up a substitute amendment (S. Amdt 3336) for the House  "tax extenders" bill that was passed in December. The Senate version was expected to contain a reinstatement of the estate tax (which is temporarily repealed for 2010), but it was not included. However, many amendments to the bill are being offered and it's still unclear whether any will address the estate tax. President Obama and Democratic leaders want to reinstate the estate tax at the level in effect in 2009 (which was cut down about 50 percent from the pre-Bush level) while Senate Republicans and a few Senate Democrats wish to cut the estate tax even further.

Senate Republicans blocked action on aid for millions of unemployed Americans this week, and threatened to continue to do so unless Congress acts on a completely unrelated matter: the federal tax on the estates of millionaires.

The Need for Help for the Unemployed

Congress has an opportunity to help families hardest hit by the recession while at the same time increasing consumer demand, which in turn will increase the number of businesses that are hiring. The Congressional Budget Office has found that extending unemployment benefits is one of the most effective ways to increase consumer demand (i.e., create jobs), making it attractive from the standpoint of economic policy as well as compassion for struggling Americans. (There are 6 job-seekers for every open position right now.)

By the end of February, 1.1 million people are scheduled to lose their UI benefits, and another 2.7 million are scheduled to lose them by the end of March. Senate Democrats hoped to move by unanimous consent to extend UI benefits and COBRA health care benefits for out-of-work Americans for 30 days, to tide them over until a longer-term extension can make its way through Congress.

Help for the Unemployed Held Hostage for Tax Cuts for Millionaires

Senate Republicans denied the unanimous consent request to pass an extension of UI and COBRA. The objection was raised by Senator Jim Bunning (R-KY) over the source of funding. But the measure is apparently also being held hostage by Senators wanting to give multi-millionaires a break on the estate tax.

The tax law passed under President Bush in 2001 gradually repealed the estate tax over several years until making it completely disappear this year. But, since the Bush tax cuts expire at the end of 2010, the estate tax will return in 2011 in its pre-Bush form (with the tax exempting the first $1 million in assets, per spouse, and a top estate tax rate of 55 percent).

House Democrats decided last year that a million dollars just isn't what it used to be, and passed a bill that would permanently increase the exemption and lower the rate, but not let the estate tax disappear in 2010. (Technically, they passed a permanent extension of the estate tax rules in effect in 2009, with a $3.5 million per-spouse exemption and a top rate of 45 percent.) But the Senate failed to act on the measure.
 
Under the proposal approved by the House, fewer than one percent of deaths would result in estate tax liability. Apparently that's too many for Senators Jon Kyl (R-AZ) and Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), who have wanted to repeal the estate tax for years and now hope that they can at least reduce it much further than the Democrats want. They have indicated that, until a deal is reached on the estate tax, they will block passage of the UI and COBRA extension. On Feb 24, Kyl, a long-time leader against the estate tax, said that Republicans will block consideration of the legislation unless they get "a path forward fairly soon" to voting on a measure to permanently weaken the estate tax.

Bizarrely, Senator Bunning blocked the unanimous consent motion for the $10.3 billion, 30-day UI and COBRA extension, saying he wanted the costs somehow offset, even while his Republican colleagues press for an estate tax measure that will cost hundreds of billions of dollars, with no hope of being offset.

Kyl and Grassley tried to cut a deal earlier this month with Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-MT) to get a fast track for the estate tax vote in exchange for votes on a jobs bill, but Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) rejected the package and put together a jobs bill of his own. That pared-down bill passed the Senate on Wednesday, including $16 billion in tax cuts for employers who hire new workers.
 
Another wrinkle is that Grassley and Kyl have reportedly been in discussions with Senator Maria Cantwell (D-WA) who has proposed to allow multi-millionaires to prepay their estate tax at a lower rate. This is clearly a accounting gimmick designed to mask the true cost of the estate tax change. It would bring some money into the Treasury during the 10-year budget window that Congress focuses on, but lose huge amounts of revenue in years after that. United for a Fair Economy has objected to the proposal in a letter to Senator Cantwell. Washington residents are urged to sign on to the letter.

Coalition Calls for More Robust Estate Tax than Approved by House Democrats

Congress needs to move in a different direction on the estate tax. Americans for a Fair Estate Tax, a coalition of organizations including Citizens for Tax Justice, has issued a call for an estate tax that exempts no more than $2 million in assets per spouse, and taxes the taxable portion of estates at a rate of at least 45 percent, with an additional 10 percent on assets in excess of $10 million. Only about 0.7 percent of deaths resulted in estate tax liability in recent years when the per-spouse exemption was set at $2 million.

Cutting the estate tax any more than this — particularly when Congress seems to have so much trouble helping the Americans who are struggling the most — would prove that Congress really does have its priorities completely backwards.

A new report from Citizens for Tax Justice explores the tax proposals included in the federal budget outline that President Obama submitted to Congress on February 1. Like the budget he submitted last year, it is a vast improvement over the policies of the Bush years and continues to outline a progressive reform agenda.

But, also similar to last year, the President’s budget could be greatly improved with more aggressive policies to raise revenue. Over the coming decade, the President proposes to cut taxes by $3.5 trillion. We include in this figure the cost of extending most of the Bush tax cuts and relief from the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) as well as additional tax cuts that President Obama proposes.

His budget would offset a portion of this cost with provisions that would raise $760 billion over a decade by limiting the benefits of itemized deductions for the wealthy, reforming the U.S. international tax system and enacting other reforms and loophole-closing measures.

The report concludes that the federal government should collect at least as much revenue as the President proposes in order to avoid larger budget deficits. There are two bare minimum requirements for Congress to achieve this. First, Congress must not extend any more of the Bush tax cuts than President Obama proposes to extend. Second, Congress must raise at least as much revenue as President Obama has proposed ($760 billion over ten years) through loophole-closers and new revenue measures.

Read the full report.

 

"From some on the right, I expect we'll hear a different argument -– that if we just make fewer investments in our people, extend tax cuts including those for the wealthier Americans, eliminate more regulations, maintain the status quo on health care, our deficits will go away.  The problem is that's what we did for eight years."  (Applause.)  "That's what helped us into this crisis.  It's what helped lead to these deficits.  We can't do it again."

President Obama spoke these words in his State of the Union address on Wednesday night, after pledging to enact an agenda that will create jobs and tackle our long-term budget deficit. He did a good job of explaining that the budget deficits that exist today are the result of deficit-financed tax cuts, two deficit-financed wars, and a major recession all occurring before he entered the White House.

But one has to wonder if President Obama is gently bearing left at a time when any sensible directions would call for a sharp left turn.

The Bush Tax Cuts

He remains committed to extending the Bush income tax cuts for the 98 percent of taxpayers who have adjusted gross income (AGI) below $250,000 (or below $200,000 for an unmarried taxpayer). The budget document released by the administration last year showed, in a convoluted way, that this would cost $1.88 trillion between now and 2019. His proposal to partially extend the Bush cut in the estate tax (making permanent the estate tax rules in effect in 2009) would cost another $576 billion over the same period, for a total of about $2.45 trillion.

The estimated costs of these proposals may be different in the budget to be released next week (since all the projections change at least somewhat in response to developments in the economy). But make no mistake, the cost of extending most of the Bush tax cuts far exceeds the savings the President hopes to achieve with his proposed spending freeze (which will actually cut spending if one accounts for inflation and other factors).

Cutting Non-Security Discretionary Programs

The administration is reported to believe $250 billion can be saved from the spending freeze, which would last three years but would not apply to national security, Medicare, Medicaid, or Social Security. The first problem is that these exempt categories of spending, along with interest payments on the national debt that cannot be avoided, make up 70 percent of the federal budget. Americans love to complain about wasteful government spending, but few realize that, once you eliminate those categories of spending that are very popular with the public, there's not a whole lot left to cut. The non-security discretionary spending that is left has come under increasing pressure in recent years since it's the only part of the budget lawmakers feel comfortable attacking.

The second problem is that cutting back spending when the economy may still be weak could prolong our downturn. Progressive observers have warned that the Roosevelt administration's decision to stop stimulating the economy and focus on deficit-reduction plunged the country back into a deeper depression in 1937.

For their part, administration officials have explained that they are not proposing an across-the-board freeze. Rather, they will identify particular types of spending that represent wasteful giveaways to special interests rather than public services that people depend upon.

Even if that's true (and the jury is still out on that), it's still peculiar that taxes aren't getting more attention. This is the third problem with the President's approach. The need for higher taxes is like an 800 pound elephant in the room that everyone is trying to ignore, even if they vaguely acknowledge that Bush's tax cuts got us into this mess. Does a family with an income of $190,000 really need every cent of their Bush tax cuts? Do families with $7 million in assets really need to be fully exempt from the estate tax? The President's tax proposals would have us believe so.

Steps in the Right Direction

The President certainly wants to move in the right direction, as was evident in various parts of his speech. He reiterated his proposal to charge a fee on risk-taking by the largest banks, which would raise $90 billion over a decade according to the administration. We've argued before that this is entirely reasonable. The institutions affected know they have an implicit guarantee from the government and are prone to put the entire economy at risk as a result. It makes sense to demand that they pay up in proportion to their risk-taking.

The President also reaffirmed his desire to do something about offshore profit-shifting by corporations. The proposals he made last year along these lines would raise $200 billion over a decade and would be extremely important, as we have explained in detail, in preventing U.S. corporations from shifting their profits to other countries.

Sometimes this shifting means companies actually move jobs and operations offshore, but other times it involves accounting gimmicks and transactions that exist only on paper. Either way, Americans lose tax revenue for no good reason other than that Congress is afraid to take on the lobbying power of multinational corporations.

America has a budget problem that is long-term in nature. The money we spend this year or next year to stimulate the economy has little impact on the long-term deficit. Reforming our tax system permanently, however, is an important part of the long-term solution.

With all the talk about federal budget deficits and families hit hard by unemployment during this recession, you would think the last thing Congress would want is a tax cut for millionaires. So, it seemed a sure bet that Congress would prevent a massive one that was scheduled under the Bush administration from taking effect this year.

The 2001 tax cut law enacted by President George W. Bush and his allies in Congress gradually shrank the estate tax each year until eliminating it altogether in 2010. Like almost all the Bush tax cuts, this change expires at the end of 2010, meaning the estate tax will come back at pre-Bush levels in 2011 if Congress does nothing. But allowing the estate tax to disappear even for a year sets a terrible precedent.

Only a tiny fraction of families, those with gigantic fortunes, are impacted by the estate tax. They have benefited more than any other Americans from the educated workforce, infrastructure and stability that government provides and that taxes make possible. So it's entirely reasonable that these families pay a tax on the transfer of their enormous estates from one generation to the next, particularly since the majority of the value in these estates is capital gains income that has never been taxed.

Democratic leaders always supported the estate tax and obviously had plenty of time to plan to repeal (or at least modify) Bush's estate tax break. The House did exactly that late last year when they passed a bill that would make permanent the estate tax rules in effect in 2009 (which is still a big break for families with big estates, compared to the pre-Bush rules).

Pathetically, the Senate failed to act.

That's right. There is no federal estate tax in effect right now. Some pundits have wondered if there will be an uptick this year in unexplained deaths of elderly wealthy people coinciding with visits from their children. We think an early death is more likely for the public services that will have to be cut to make up the lost revenue if repeal (or any proposal close to repeal) is made permanent. 

Call Congress Now!

United for a Fair Economy is providing a toll-free number and information that people can use to call their members of Congress and urge them to reinstate the estate tax. Every member of the House and Senate -- particularly those who claim to care about budget deficits -- needs to hear this message. Click here for information from UFE.

The U.S. House of Representatives adjourned for the year on Wednesday while the Senate hustles to finish legislation on health care. As of this writing, an array of major tax issues are still to be resolved in the next several days or when Congress returns in 2010:

Health Care Reform

On November 7, the House passed its health care bill, (H.R. 3962), which includes a public option. The largest revenue-raising provision in the House health bill is a surcharge of 5.4 percent on adjusted gross incomes over $1 million (or over $500,000 for unmarried individuals).

(See CTJ's previous analysis and state-by-state estimates of the surcharge in the House health care bill.)

The Senate is still working to pass a health care bill, and some reports claim that the chamber could be working on Christmas Eve to accomplish it. While there is a clear majority of Senators willing to support a public option, the rules allowing 41 Senators to filibuster legislation have encouraged a few conservative Democrats to join Republicans in blocking a public option.

While some details remain to be worked out, a majority of Senators seems to have settled on certain revenue-raising provisions to help pay for health care reform. The largest revenue-raiser in the still-developing Senate bill is an excise tax on high-cost health insurance plans. This excise tax is controversial because many analysts conclude that these plans are not particularly generous in the benefits they provide and they are not necessarily enjoyed by high-income workers. Rather, the high costs are often the result of insurers charging more to cover a work force that is older than average or that has high health risks.

(See CTJ's previous analysis concluding that the Senate's proposed excise tax on high-cost health insurance is less progressive than the surcharge in the House health care bill.)

One revenue-raiser in the Senate proposal that is progressive is an increase in the Medicare payroll tax rate on earnings over $250,000 (or over $200,000 for an unmarried individual).

While this tax increase would only affect those who can afford to pay more, an even better proposal would reform the Medicare tax so that it no longer exempts investment income. This idea was included in an amendment that was filed by Senator Debbie Stabenow during the Finance Committee markup, but was not acted on. Such an amendment may be offered when health care reform is debated on the Senate floor.

Job Creation

On December 8, President Obama announced several proposals to create jobs. His best ideas involve direct spending by the federal government (including extending aid to unemployed and low-income people and aid to state and local governments, among other things). His worst ideas involve tax cuts (including eliminating capital gains taxes on small business investment and providing a tax credit for payroll expansion).

(See CTJ's previous discussion of President Obama's job creation proposals and ways to stimulate the economy.)

The House approved a $154 billion jobs bill, as part of a regular appropriations bill (H.R. 2847), before adjourning this week, and thankfully, it focuses on direct spending. One of the few tax cuts included is a provision to remove the earnings requirement (currently set at $3,000) for the refundable portion of the Child Tax Credit, ensuring that low-income families with children can benefit from it. The Senate is not expected to take up jobs legislation until sometime next year.

Estate Tax

The tax cut legislation enacted by President Bush and his allies in Congress in 2001 set the estate tax to gradually shrink until disappearing altogether in 2010. But, like all the Bush tax cuts, this estate tax cut expires at the end of 2010, meaning the estate tax will reappear in 2011 at the pre-Bush levels if Congress simply does nothing.

Families who have several million dollars to leave to the next generation have benefited the most from the infrastructure, educated workforce, stability and other public goods that taxes make possible. So it's entirely reasonable that these families pay a tax on the transfer of their enormous estates from one generation to the next, particularly since the majority of the value in these estates is capital gains income that has never been taxed.

One might be tempted to think that allowing the estate tax to disappear would be fine if it reappears at the pre-Bush levels in 2010. Unfortunately, the one-year repeal of the estate tax could tempt some lawmakers to make that repeal permanent, or might tempt them to allow only a very scaled back version of the estate tax to reappear in 2011.

So the House of Representatives approved a compromise that would make permanent the estate tax rules in effect in 2009. This would partially preserve the Bush cut in the estate tax, but prevent the tax from disappearing in 2010.

(See CTJ's previous analysis of the estate tax legislation, along with state-by-state figures showing how few estates are actually subject to the tax.)

Key Democratic Senators indicated that they did not want to make permanent the 2009 rules because -- incredibly -- they were interested in reducing the estate tax even more. Democratic leaders in the Senate attempted but failed to get agreement in the chamber to pass a one-year extension of the 2009 rules, which would prevent the estate tax from disappearing in 2010 and allow Congress to debate a permanent solution as part of the broader tax debate that must happen before the Bush tax cuts expire at the end of next year.

Pathetically, the Senate failed last week to prevent the one-year repeal, which they had known was coming ever since the Bush cut in the estate tax was enacted back in 2001. Democratic leaders in the Senate say they will enact the one-year extension of the 2009 estate tax rules retroactively in 2010. While retroactive tax increases may not be the ideal way to do things, this approach should not cause any problems since tax planners have known for years that Congress was likely to act to prevent this one-year disappearance of the estate tax.

Corporate Tax Breaks (aka "Tax Extenders")

On December 9, the House approved H.R. 4213, which would extend a series of tax cuts (mostly breaks for business) but would offset the costs by closing the infamous "carried interest" loophole for buyout fund managers and by cracking down on offshore tax cheats.

The bill would also require the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) to issue reports evaluating these tax cuts before the end of next year, when Congress is likely to act on them again.

CTJ joined the AFL-CIO, SEIU, AFSCME and eight national non-profits in signing a letter in support of H.R. 4213 for these reasons.

The provisions extending the tax cuts (often called the "tax extenders") are enacted by Congress every year or so. CTJ and other analysts have often criticized the tax extenders as corporate pork routed through the tax code.

But H.R. 4213 is a major step in the right direction for the reasons spelled out in the letter to Congress.

(See our previous article on H.R. 4213 explaining the points made in the letter.)

Democratic leaders in the Senate want to pass the tax extenders retroactively early in 2010. One problem is that the chairman of the Senate tax-writing committee, Max Baucus (D-MT) believes that the carried interest issue is “best dealt with in the context of an overall tax reform,” according to a spokesman. As we've explained before, this is an all-purpose excuse for legislators who want to avoid closing even the most unfair and outrageous loopholes.

(Read CTJ's recent report on the House estate tax bill.)

On Thursday, the U.S. House of Representatives approved a bill (H.R. 4154) that would partially extend the Bush cut in the estate tax. H.R. 4154, introduced by Rep. Earl Pomeroy (D-ND), would make permanent the estate tax rules in effect in 2009, which would prevent the estate tax from disappearing in 2010 but which would still constitute a massive tax cut for millionaires in years after that.

The tax cut legislation enacted by President Bush and his allies in Congress in 2001 included a gradual reduction in the estate tax over several years followed by repeal of the estate tax in 2010. Like almost all of the Bush tax cuts, this one expires at the end of 2010, meaning the estate tax will reappear at pre-Bush levels if Congress does nothing.

Unfortunately, many observers believe Congress is not likely to simply allow the pre-Bush estate tax rules to come back into effect in 2011 (despite the obvious need for revenue). In fact, if the estate tax is allowed to disappear in 2010, lawmakers could be more tempted to make repeal permanent or to enact legislation that would allow only a very scaled back version of the estate tax to reappear in 2011.

In other words, the good thing about H.R. 4154 is that it could prevent a situation in which Congress would be tempted to enact an even more ludicrous tax cut for families with enormous estates.

The bad thing about H.R. 4154 is that it's a massive tax cut for the richest families in America. As CTJ's recent report points out, only 0.7 percent of the Americans who died in 2007 left an estate that was taxable. In 2009 that number will be far lower because the amount exempt from the estate tax has grown significantly under the changes scheduled in the 2001 law.

The 2009 estate tax rules, which the Pomeroy bill would make permanent, significantly reduce taxes for extremely wealthy families. These are the very families who benefit the most from the infrastructure, education, stability and other things that taxes pay for and which make it possible for some Americans to accumulate massive fortunes.

Congress must prevent the estate tax from disappearing in 2010 and also must set estate tax rules as close as possible to the pre-Bush estate tax rules. Many progressive lawmakers in the House decided that the Pomeroy bill is the best that can be hoped for. Now attention turns to the Senate, which must find time to enact legislation that will prevent the estate tax from disappearing and must overcome any temptation to cut the estate tax even more.

In a major tactical retreat, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Federation of Independent Businesses and several other organizations that claim to represent the interests of business have announced that they will no longer push for repeal of the estate tax. They will, however, push for a plan that will gut the estate tax and that has received some support in the Senate.

The tax cuts enacted under President Bush in 2001 scheduled a gradual repeal of the estate tax, with the amount of assets exempted from the tax gradually increasing over a decade and the tax rate on estates gradually dropping until the estate tax will disappear entirely in 2010. Like almost all of the Bush tax cuts, this cut in the estate tax expires at the end of 2010, meaning that rules scheduled under President Clinton will come back into effect in 2011. Many Republicans and some Democrats in the Senate have, in the past, supported permanently repealing the estate tax. 

President Obama and Democratic leaders in the House and Senate support a compromise that would prevent the estate tax from disappearing in 2010, but which would also unnecessarily cut the estate tax below the level it would reach in years after 2010 if Congress simply does nothing. This compromise would essentially freeze in place the estate tax rules in effect in 2009, which exempt the first $3.5 million in estate assets (or $7 million in the case of a married couple) and tax the rest at a rate of 45 percent.

Citizens for Tax Justice has argued that even this policy amounts to an unwarranted cut in the estate tax. State-by-state figures from CTJ show that only 0.7 percent of the deaths that occurred in 2006 resulted in any estate tax liability in 2007. (Estate taxes are usually paid in the year after the year in which an individual dies.) 2006 was a year in which the estate tax exempted the first $2 million in estate assets (or $4 million in the case of a married couple). (A proposal put forward by Congressman Jim McDermott in April would make permanent adjustments to the estate tax without giving away as much revenue.)

The coalition of business groups that has been trying for years to permanently repeal the estate tax now says it supports a permanent estate tax that exempts the first $5 million in estate assets (or $10 million in the case of a married couple) and taxes the rest at a rate of 35 percent.

A budget amendment with these basic parameters was approved by 51 Senators in April, but was not included in the final budget resolution adopted by Congress. It's difficult to know if a majority of Senators would ever really support the enactment of such a policy. The budget amendment was to be deficit-neutral (which would be difficult to achieve) and several of the 51 Senators who voted in favor would likely oppose a cut in the estate tax if it increased the budget deficit.

Any legislation to change the estate tax would require 60 votes. Democratic leaders are hoping to round up that many votes to pass a bill that at least extends the 2009 estate tax rules for one year, through the end of 2010, to prevent the estate tax from disappearing for a year. Then, sometime during 2010, Congress could take up the question of what the estate tax should look like in the long-run while they take up the larger debate over which components of the Bush tax cuts to extend.

At least one anti-estate tax group, the American Family Business Institute, refused to change its position and still backs full repeal of the estate tax. The organization is apparently linked to the American Family Business Foundation, which issued two studies earlier this year that claimed to show how repeal of the estate tax was vital to economic growth. CTJ released a report in May that examined the methodological flaws and illogical assumptions that underpin these two studies.

Two New "Studies" from a Right-Wing Foundation Say the Estate Tax Causes the Rich to Stop Working and Spend Away Their Millions

Read the Report

Read the Two-Page Summary

A new report from CTJ examines a duo of new "studies" claiming that repeal of the estate tax is crucial to our economy. The studies, which were commissioned by a foundation established to promote repeal of the estate tax, use one-sided analysis to produce the conclusions that their funders desire.

One study, released a few months ago by Douglas Holtz-Eakin and Cameron Smith, claims that repealing the federal estate tax would create 1.5 million jobs. The other, by Stephen Entin, claims that repealing the estate tax would actually result in increased federal revenue, not to mention higher gross domestic product (GDP).

The CTJ report finds that the "studies" have several fatal flaws. For example, the authors model the impact of taxes on the economy by considering the alleged costs of taxes but ignore the benefits. The benefits of taxes - the public services like roads, schools, law enforcement, national defense and other services that taxes make possible - are simply ignored. Since the authors assume that tax dollars are collected and then simply disappear, of course they can come to no other conclusion but that taxes (including the estate tax) are a drain on the economy!

Other flaws in these studies involve the illogical assumptions they make about how people respond to the estate tax. At one point Holtz-Eakin and Smith explain that the estate tax might cause a wealthy entrepreneur to "buy an around-the-world cruise" instead of investing his money.

But most estate taxes are paid on estates worth over $5 million, and 40 percent of estate taxes are paid on estate worth over $10 million. Let's say you had this sort of money and you wanted to keep your wealth from being taxed by the federal government. What would you do? You can't put it in stocks or bonds or even a savings account. You can't buy fancy houses, because they would become part of your estate. Even if you buy expensive cars or yachts, those would be part of your estate as well (even if they lose some of their value before you die).

You would have to spend your entire estate on caviar or cruises or cocaine or something that won't be around after you die. It's unclear whether anyone can eat away, cruise away, or snort up their nose $5 million. (We won't go so far as to say it's impossible.)

Read the Report

Read the Two-Page Summary

On May 11, the Treasury Department released its "Green Book" containing new details of the tax changes included in the President's fiscal year 2010 budget proposal. In addition to extending the Bush tax cuts for all but the richest Americans and making permanent many of the tax cuts in the recently enacted economic recovery act, the President would also make many changes that would raise revenue by closing loopholes, blocking tax avoidance schemes and making the tax code more progressive.

A new report from Citizens for Tax Justice examines and describes the significant revenue-raising provisions that are sure to be debated fiercely in the months to come.

Read the report.

Approval Marks a Major Step Towards Enacting President's Agenda

On Wednesday, both the House and Senate approved a Congressional budget resolution for fiscal year 2010 that paves the way for several of the President's major initiatives. The resolution allows Congress to make new investments in education and clean energy and puts in place procedures that will make it easier for Congress to enact comprehensive health care reform. It also allows Congress to extend the Bush tax cuts for all but the richest Americans.

The budget resolution allows for about $3.5 trillion in federal spending in fiscal year 2010 and includes important tax and spending provisions related to years after that. It is not a law and is not binding, but puts in place caps on the spending that Congress appropriates each year, sets targets for tax and spending changes and includes certain procedural changes that make it more likely Congress will meet these goals.

Tax Cuts Extended for All but the Rich

For example, the budget resolution allows Congress to reduce revenues by a certain amount by extending the Bush income tax cuts. It is understood that the amount of revenue-reduction allowed would be sufficient to extend the Bush tax cuts for those with incomes below $250,000. It also allows for Congress to reduce revenues by preventing the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) from expanding as it is scheduled to under current law. Similarly, it allows Congress to extend the estate tax rules in effect in 2009 instead of allowing the estate tax to revert to the rules put in place during the Clinton years, before Bush's cuts in the estate tax were enacted.

The resolution allows for Congress to enact these tax cuts without finding new revenue to pay for them -- on one condition, which is that Congress enacts a statutory pay-as-you-go (PAYGO) rule that will (in theory) prevent Congress from enacting any more legislation that will increase the deficit. That means that any additional tax cuts (say, an extension of the Making Work Pay Credit that was enacted for two years as part of the economic stimulus package) would have to be combined with revenue-raising provisions to offset the costs.

Predictably, allies of former President George W. Bush have expressed horror that Democratic leaders and President Obama wish to extend the Bush tax cuts for 97.5 percent of Americans rather than 100 percent. The Democrats and the President would allow the Bush tax cuts to expire for singles with incomes over $200,000 and married couples with incomes over $250,000 (which make up roughly the richest 2.5 percent of taxpayers).

For their part, House Republicans used the budget debate to demonstrate to the public just how lopsided the tax code would be if their goals were ever realized and just how much government would have to shrink because of the revenue losses that would result. Earlier this month, the ranking Republican on the House Budget Committee presented his tax and spending plan which would cut and privatize Medicare, convert Medicaid into limited block grants to states, repeal the recently enacted economic stimulus law and deeply cut the relatively small amount of government spending devoted to non-military, non-mandatory programs.

Citizens for Tax Justice published a report concluding that under this GOP plan, over a third of taxpayers, mostly low- and middle-income families, would pay more in taxes than they would under the House Democratic plan in 2010, while the richest one percent of taxpayers would pay $75,000 less, on average.

Final Budget Leaves Out the Senate's Outrageous Estate Tax Cut

Progressives scored a victory when Democratic leaders agreed to exclude from the final budget an amendment adopted by the Senate during its budget debate on April 2 which would slash the estate tax to benefit multi-millionaires. Before the Senate approved this amendment, Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said, "It is so stunning, so outrageous that some would choose this hour of national crisis to push for an amendment to slash the estate tax for the super wealthy." His common sense view carried the day as negotiators hammered out the final resolution.

The tax cuts enacted under President Bush in 2001 scheduled a gradual repeal of the estate tax, with the amount of assets exempted from the tax gradually increasing over a decade and the tax rate on estates gradually dropping until the estate tax would disappear entirely in 2010. Like almost all of the Bush tax cuts, this cut in the estate tax expires at the end of 2010, meaning that rules scheduled under President Clinton would come back into effect in 2011.

The budget resolutions passed out of the House and Senate budget committees in March both assumed that the estate tax rules in place in 2009 would be made permanent, meaning the Bush estate tax cut would be partially made permanent but the estate tax would not disappear entirely in 2010. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities released a report finding that about 99.7 percent of estates would be untouched by the tax under this proposal.

Incredibly, 51 Senators voted in favor of the amendment offered by Senators Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) and Jon Kyl (R-AZ) to cut the estate tax even more than this. The 2009 estate tax rules exempt the first $7 million of assets passed on by a married couple (as well as assets they leave to charity) and tax the rest at a rate of 45 percent. The Kyl-Lincoln amendment called for a $10 million exemption for married couples and a 35 percent rate.

Taking Steps Towards Enacting the President's Priorities

Progressives scored another victory in the area of health care. House and Senate leaders decided to include in the final budget resolution a mechanism known as "reconciliation" which will allow the Senate to enact health care reform and higher education loan changes with a simple majority vote.

The practice of filibustering legislation in the Senate has, over the years, turned into a default rule that three fifths the Senate's members must agree to pass a bill. This means that legislation supported by Senators representing a majority of Americans is often blocked. Many advocates fear that this is exactly what could happen to health care reform and many other of the President's important initiatives.

Reconciliation is a way around this obstacle. A budget resolution can include reconciliation instructions specifying that committees will pass legislation that can then pass the full House and Senate under a streamlined process. In the Senate, that streamlined process means that the bill can be passed with just 51 votes.

The particular version of reconciliation included in this budget is optional, meaning Democratic leaders will resort to using it only if bipartisan consensus proves elusive.

Several Republican Senators, and some Democratic Senators, have taken the view that majority rule is undemocratic, and have called reconciliation a partisan ploy to "ram through" the President's agenda. (The idea of the Senate moving too quickly is a little hard for any Hill observer to understand.) More importantly, enacting health care reform will require Congress to raise a great deal of revenue, and finding a large bipartisan majority for that might be a challenge.

Finally, some have complained that reconciliation is only to be used for deficit-reduction, but this is entirely unconvincing because these are largely the same members who voted in favor of reconciliation bills during the Bush years that actually increased the deficit by cutting taxes.

On Wednesday, Rep. Jim McDermott (D-WA), Chairman of the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Income Security and Family Support, introduced the Sensible Estate Tax Act of 2009. The bill would result in an estate tax that is more progressive than what either the Obama administration or Republican leaders have proposed. It would exempt the first $2 million in assets in an estate per person, or $4 million for a married couple. It would impose a 45 percent estate tax on the taxable amount of an estate up to $5 million, 50 percent on the taxable amount between $5 and $10 million and 55 percent on the taxable amount in excess of $10 million.

Under current law, the estate tax is scheduled to disappear in 2010 and then reappear in 2011 at pre-2001 levels (meaning a $1 million per-spouse exemption and a top rate of 55 percent). President Obama's budget blueprint proposed to make permanent the 2009 rules which include an exemption of $3.5 million per spouse and a top rate of 45 percent.

The McDermott bill would index the exemptions for inflation and includes other significant changes. It would make the exemption portable (meaning that one spouse could also use the other spouse's exemption), and it would reunify the gift and estate taxes. (Under current law and the administration's proposal, the gift tax exemption would remain at $1 million.) The McDermott proposal would, importantly, bring back the credit for state estate taxes, which is a source of revenue for the states.

The Joint Committee on Taxation estimates that the McDermott proposal would cost $202.8 billion over ten years (compared to current law), about 20 percent less than the President's estate tax proposal, which is estimated to cost $256 billion over ten years.

Estate taxes affect less than one percent of Americans. In 2007, when the estate tax exemption was at the $2 million level that McDermott proposes to make permanent, only 0.7 percent of estates were liable for the tax.

The U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate both approved budget resolutions on Thursday that move Congress a step closer to enacting President Obama's agenda, without being quite as bold or explicit as the budget outline released by the President in late February. Both resolutions would spend about $3.5 trillion in 2010 and include non-binding, but important, provisions affecting spending and revenues in years after that. As lawmakers from both chambers leave Washington for their spring recess, behind-the-scenes negotiations will likely pave the way for a House-Senate conference to take place upon their return to iron out the differences between the two resolutions. On some key issues like estate tax and health care, the House has made wiser choices that will hopefully be maintained in the final budget resolution.

The basic thrust of many of the tax policies embodied in the budget resolutions mirror the President's proposals. Both assume the extension of the Bush income tax cuts for everyone except taxpayers with incomes above $200,000 (or $250,000 for married couples). Taxpayers above these thresholds are affected by the top two income tax rates, which would revert to 36 and 39.6 percent. Both resolutions would extend the "AMT patch," a measure that increases the exemptions from the Alternative Minimum Tax to ensure that most taxpayers are not affected by it. (The chambers differ on the extent to which the costs of the AMT patch will have to be offset with revenue-raising measures in the future.)

The resolutions do not follow the President's proposals on certain issues. For example, President Obama proposed that the income tax cuts aimed at working families and included in the recently-enacted stimulus bill be made permanent. The resolutions would make some of these permanent, like the expansion in the child tax credit and the American Opportunity Tax Credit for higher education.

But they would not make permanent the Making Work Pay Credit, one of Obama's signature tax policies. Neither do they include any specific language to create a "cap and trade" program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, which, in the President's proposal, would produce the revenue needed to offset the costs of the Making Work Pay Credit and other energy initiatives.

Similarly, the resolutions do not include language laying out how Congress will pay for health care reform. (The President's budget outline included a reduction in the benefits of itemized deductions for the rich to partially fund health care reform.)

None of this means that Congress will not act on these proposals of the President's. The resolution includes language allowing for deficit-neutral legislation in these areas without specifying how money will be spent or how it will be raised.

Congress's next important test involves settling the differences between the House and Senate resolutions. When it comes to revenues raised to pay for health care or revenues raised from the estate tax, hopefully the choices made by the House will be maintained in the final budget resolution. See the following Digest articles for more.

Estate Tax: Senate Approves a Break for Millionaires that Leader Reid Calls "So Stunning, So Outrageous"

 

Reconciliation for Health Care Reform: House Moves to Stop Senators' Obstruction of Measures with Majority Support

 

House GOP's Alternative Budget: Poor Pay More, Rich Pay Less, Stimulus Repealed and Government Shrinks

The tax cuts enacted under President Bush in 2001 scheduled a gradual repeal of the estate tax, with the amount of assets exempted from the tax gradually increasing over a decade and the tax rate on estates gradually dropping until the estate tax would disappear entirely in 2010. Like almost all of the Bush tax cuts, this cut in the estate tax expires at the end of 2010, meaning that rules scheduled under President Clinton would come back into effect in 2011.

The budget resolutions passed out of the House and Senate budget committees last week both assumed that the estate tax rules in place in 2009 would be made permanent, meaning the Bush estate tax cut would be partially made permanent but the estate tax would not disappear entirely. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities released a report this week finding that about 99.7 percent of estates would be untouched by the tax under this proposal.

Incredibly, 51 Senators voted to approve an amendment offered by Senators Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) and Jon Kyl (R-AZ) to cut the estate tax even more than this. The 2009 estate tax rules exempt the first $7 million of assets passed on by a married couple (as well as assets they leave to charity) and tax the rest at a rate of 45 percent. The Kyl-Lincoln amendment puts the Senate on record as supporting a $10 million exemption for married couples and a 35 percent rate.

Before the Senate approved this amendment, Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said, "It is so stunning, so outrageous that some would choose this hour of national crisis to push for an amendment to slash the estate tax for the super wealthy."

Remarkably, both the Republican Senators and the "moderate" Democratic Senators who voted for this expanded break for families with millions of dollars to pass on to their heirs were largely the same Senators who claim to be concerned about budget deficits and the costs of the President's proposals to help working families.

The actual consequence of the amendment is unclear for several reasons. First, the amendment was written to be "deficit-neutral," meaning that if Congress wants to pass actual legislation to cut the estate tax, they would have to find a way to raise enough revenue to replace those billions lost. Some of the Senators who voted for the amendment would oppose a cut in the estate tax if it is deficit-financed (which any estate tax cut is likely to be). Second, the Senate then adopted (by a vote of 56 to 43) a confusing amendment creating a point of order AGAINST any estate tax cut if the Senate did not also provide some new tax cut, costing the same amount of money, for people earning less than $100,000. Whether that condition could be met is an open question.

Sorting through this confusing jumble of stated intentions and caveats will hopefully become unnecessary. The conferees crafting the final budget resolution should leave out the Senate's ludicrous cut in the estate tax.

When anti-tax activists and lawmakers complain that Congress and the President are pursuing policies that will cause taxes to be too high, the first question anyone should ask is: Compared to what? What exactly is the alternative to allowing the Bush tax cuts to end (at least for the rich) and finding new ways to raise revenue?

This week the House GOP showed us what the alternative is and it's frightening. On Wednesday, the ranking Republican on the U.S. House of Representatives' Budget Committee, Congressman Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.), released a budget plan which he argues is a more fiscally responsible alternative to the budget outline proposed by President Obama and the similar budget resolutions approved by both chambers last night. His proposal is apparently an update of the plan that House GOP leaders introduced last week and is different in some key respects.

The revised House GOP budget plan would move towards cutting and privatizing Medicare, convert Medicaid into limited block grants to states, and even cut Social Security benefits for some retirees. The plan would deeply cut the relatively small amount of government spending devoted to non-military, non-mandatory programs by refusing to adjust the budgets of these programs for inflation and population growth for five years. The House GOP plan would repeal the recently enacted economic stimulus law (the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, or ARRA) a year before its expiration at the end of 2010.

A report from Citizens for Tax Justice compares the income tax proposals in the House GOP plan to the income tax proposals in the House Democratic plan in 2010, and finds that:

• Over a third of taxpayers, mostly low- and middle-income families, would pay more in taxes under the House GOP plan than they would under the House Democratic plan in 2010.
• The richest one percent of taxpayers would pay $75,000 less, on average, in income taxes under the House GOP plan than they would under the Democratic plan in 2010.
• The income tax proposals in the House GOP plan, which is presented as a fiscally responsible alternative to the Democratic plan, would cost over $225 billion more than the Democratic plan's income tax policies in 2010 alone.

Read the report.