With Congress out of Washington for the August recess, more and more reporters and opinion makers are turning their attention to the enormous decisions on tax policy that await lawmakers when they return.

Anti-Tax Lawmakers Ignoring Public Opinion

The public supports President Obama's approach to the Bush tax cuts. A new CNN poll finds that only 31 percent of respondents think that Congress should extend the Bush tax cuts for the very rich as well as everyone else. This is in keeping with previous polls with similar results.

The main justification given by anti-tax lawmakers and activists for ignoring public opinion on this matter is that higher taxes on the rich, they claim, will hurt business investment and therefore hurt job creation. But a growing chorus of analysts agree that allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire for the rich will not harm the economy.

Anti-Tax Lawmakers Ignoring Rational, Informed Economic Analysis

For example, Allan Sloan, senior editor for Fortune and a columnist for the Washington Post, writes that "From the start of the income tax through 2003, dividends were taxed as regular income, and capital gains were treated far less favorably than now. Somehow both the republic and the financial markets survived. They'll survive higher rates, too."

Sloan provides a refreshingly calm approach to a subject that sends many people into hysterics: the impact of taxes on investment.

For example, he points out that the 2003 tax cut bill signed by President Bush "set dividend taxes for the high-bracket crowd at preferential rates for the first time and brought the rate on long-term capital gains to its lowest point since 1941, according to the tax publishing firm CCH. But that didn't exactly result in a bull market. According to Wilshire Associates, whose numbers I'm using throughout this column, the U.S. stock market rose only 14.6 percent from the May 5, 2003, tax cut through Obama's election on Nov. 4, 2008... That price gain, about 2.5 percent a year compounded, was less than half the historical rate."

In Sloan's view, the ups and downs of the stock market have little if anything to do with tax rates. He goes on to say, "Since Obama's election, the market has been very good. In fact, the market's 10.4 percent rise during Obama's first 100 days in office bested tax-cutting Ronald Reagan (a 4 percent gain for his first 100 days) and George W. Bush (a 2.3 percent loss for the equivalent period)."

Higher taxes on the very rich will not reduce their investment in stocks and bonds and also will not reduce their investments in their own businesses that they actively operate (as we have explained elsewhere).

When it comes to job creation, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office agrees that the other measures that have been discussed in Congress (like aid to state and local governments and extended unemployment benefits) are many times more effective than income tax cuts for the rich.

President Obama wants to sign a jobs bill into law. The majority of members of the House and Senate want the same thing. So do the two million out-of-work Americans who will have lost their unemployment benefits by July because of Congress's inaction. Not to mention the millions of Americans who will see public services like education and public safety slashed because their states have to make up shortfalls in Medicaid funding. And then there are the mainstream economists who conclude that some deficit-spending on measures that pump money immediately into the economy and create jobs are entirely justified when unemployment is hovering around ten percent. In the face of all this, a minority of 42 Senators has managed to block legislative action.

Congress has fought a months-long battle over the bill, H.R. 4213, which includes an extension of emergency unemployment benefits and Medicaid funding to states, two spending measures that economist Mark Zandi has argued are the most effective way to stimulate the economy. These measures result in immediate spending, which leads to a boost in consumer demand, and the retention or creation of jobs to produce the goods and services needed to meet that demand.

The bill also includes a collection of provisions that extend short-term tax breaks for business that Congress enacts every year or so. Members of Congress and Hill staffers often call these the "tax extenders." CTJ has criticized the tax extenders for years. But, we support them this year because they are coupled with provisions that would offset their costs by clamping down on unfair tax loopholes. This is a major step forward for Congress. See CTJ's many reports on these loophole-closing provisions.

To their credit, Democratic leaders have tried every conceivable tactic to win over the so-called "moderates" who are blocking the bill.

For example, the House passed legislation three times to completely eliminate the infamous "carried interest" loophole that allows certain wealthy investment fund managers to treat their compensation as capital gains and thus enjoy a lower tax rate. This time, the House scaled back its provision to close this loophole, and Democratic leaders in the Senate scaled the provision back multiple times in their versions of the bill. Eliminating this loophole, which was proposed by the Obama administration, was estimated to raise about $24 billion over a decade. Democratic leaders in the Senate whittled that down to $13.6 billion. The provision is not so much a loophole-closer any more as a loophole-reducer.

Other compromises made to secure votes were even more alarming. The most recent proposal would have taken over $9 billion of unspent funds from the recovery act that are supposed to be used for food stamps to help offset the costs of this bill. This is preposterous. Food stamps are one of the most effective types of stimulus, along with unemployment insurance benefits and fiscal aid to states, according to Mark Zandi.

The country needs the Senate to pass, some way or another, a jobs bill. Sadly, Democrat Ben Nelson and the 41 Republican Senators have the ability, under the Senate's bizarre rules, to stop that from happening.

As the Senate continues a seemingly endless debate over H.R. 4213, the jobs and "tax extenders" bill, business lobbyists, right-leaning economists and politicians have had more time to shape their arguments in defense of the tax loopholes that the bill would pare back.

To offset the costs of the tax breaks included in the bill, three types of loopholes would be restricted. They include the "carried interest" loophole that allows certain investment fund managers to treat their compensation as capital gains and thus enjoy a lower tax rate, the "John Edwards" loophole allowing people with "S corporations" to avoid payroll taxes, and abuses of the foreign tax credit by U.S.-based multinational corporations.

The debate over the "carried interest" loophole has received the most attention, and CTJ has responded to some of the outlandish arguments made in its defense.

More recently, Senator Olympia Snowe (R-ME) has voiced her opposition to the provisions regarding "S corporations," and filed an amendment to strip them from the bill. A recent report from CTJ explains that this amendment should be rejected because the loophole in question allows people to underestimate the extent to which their income is wages, meaning they avoid payroll taxes.

The report also explains that the main effect of the provisions in H.R. 4213 regarding S corporations would probably be on Medicare taxes. The new health care reform law actually applies Medicare taxes to most non-retirement income, but there is a bizarre exception left for certain non-wage income from S corporations. H.R. 4213 would not even eliminate this exception entirely but would merely target those taxpayers who are most obviously manipulating the tax rules to avoid paying the Medicare tax. This seems like the least Congress could do.

The provisions in H.R. 4213 that prevent abuses of the foreign tax credit have also received more attention lately. A new report from CTJ responds to criticisms of these provisions made by the Peterson Institute's Gary Hufbauer and Theodore Moran.

The purpose of the foreign tax credit is to ensure that American individuals and corporations are not double-taxed on income that they earn in other countries. Hufbauer and Moran seem to acknowledge — and endorse — the common practice of corporations using credits in excess of what is necessary to avoid double-taxation. In these instances, corporations are really using the credit to lower their U.S. taxes on their U.S. income. Or, put another way, it means the credit is being used to subsidize foreign countries by helping U.S. corporations pay their foreign taxes.

Surely, everyone should agree that this is not the purpose of the foreign tax credit. But without the reforms included in H.R. 4213, these practices will continue, and we will have missed an important opportunity to make our tax system fairer and more rational.

Federal benefits for the long-term unemployed have been expired for over a week and the Senate still has not approved a bill (H.R. 4213) that would extend these and other vital measures. The bill also includes badly needed Medicaid funding for states and other provisions that would stimulate the economy. (See CTJ's recent reports on this legislation).

Call your Senators and urge them to vote for H.R. 4213.

Use this toll-free number provided by AFSCME to make your call: 888-340-6521

Part of the consternation among some Senators is that the spending provisions in the bill would add (modestly) to the deficit. Economists have explained that short-term deficit-financed spending measures can be used to effectively boost consumer demand, and thus job creation, during a recession, without adding to the long-term budget crisis.

Many of the Senators who have supported tax cuts that created long-term deficits (the kind of deficits that actually do lead away from fiscal sustainability) now oppose this bill out of their concern about "fiscal responsibility." Other Senators are more genuine in their concern about deficits but have wildly misplaced fears about a bill that has little, if anything, to do with our long-term budget situation.

A number of Senators are still concerned about the tax provisions in the bill. It includes an assortment of small tax cuts (mostly for business), which are often called the "tax extenders" by members of Congress and their staffs. While these tax breaks probably accomplish very little, the good news is that their cost would be offset with provisions that close unfair tax loopholes.

It's the Senators' devotion to maintaining these loopholes that is another factor slowing down progress on this bill.

Battle Continues Over "Carried Interest" Loophole for Investment Fund Managers

The most controversial tax provision would clamp down on the "carried interest" loophole, which allows investment fund managers to treat their earned income as capital gains and thus benefit from a much lower income tax rate. Over the past few weeks, some honest investment fund managers have spoken up to tell Congress that their loophole really is unjustified, and it was also reported that two Republican Senators favor closing the loophole.

The draft of the bill proposed by Senate Majority Leader Reid already watered down this reform a great deal (compared to the version that passed the House) by allowing the lower capital gains rate to continue to apply to a larger portion of carried interest. As a new report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities explains, the last thing Congress should do is weaken this provision any further.

Senators Defend the "John Edwards" Loophole

Another controversial reform would close the "John Edwards" loophole for "S corporations." Payroll taxes apply to wage income, but not other types of income. So, some people want to disguise their wage income as non-wage investment income to avoid payroll taxes. People who own S corporations have to determine (and tell the IRS) how much of their income is wage income and how much of it is other income, and of course there is a huge incentive to underestimate the amount that is wage income.

John Edwards famously played this trick by saying that his name was an asset and this asset, rather than his work, was generating most of the income of his S corporation.

Some Senators have expressed concern about the effect this reform would have on small businesses. But none have explained coherently why we should allow this type of scheme to continue.

Call your Senators and tell them to close the "carried interest" loophole allowing multi-millionaires running investment funds to pay taxes at lower rates than their secretaries.

Call the Capitol switchboard at 202-224-3121 and ask to be connected to the Senators for your state.

Public interest advocates, faith-based groups, labor unions and others continued their push this week to prod Congress to enact a jobs bill that extends unemployment insurance benefits, COBRA health benefits for unemployed individuals, Medicaid funding for states and other vital measures that would boost the economy. The House approved its bill (the latest version of H.R. 4213) only after severely weakening it by dropping COBRA and Medicaid funding, and the Senate left for the Memorial Day recess without acting on it.

Most of the spending provisions in the bill are considered emergency spending, and do not have to be paid for under Congress's budget procedures. The bill also includes provisions extending several temporary tax breaks (mostly for business), and these provisions are often called the "tax extenders." The costs of the tax extenders are offset with provisions that close unfair tax loopholes.

These loophole-closing provisions are among several factors that have slowed down progress on the bill. Unfortunately, some Senators seem reluctant to close even the most abusive tax loopholes.

Citizens for Tax Justice released a group of reports over the past few weeks about the tax loophole-closing provisions in the bill.

The American Jobs and Closing Tax Loopholes Act of 2010 (a.k.a. the “Extenders” Bill) Would Boost the Economy and Improve Tax Fairness
This report explains the three general types of loophole-closers in H.R. 4213, including provisions to end abuses of foreign tax credits, provisions to clamp down on the "carried interest" loophole, and provisions to end the "John Edwards" loophole for business people with "S corporations."

Senators Defend “Carried Interest” Loophole for Investment Fund Managers in the Name of the Poor, Minorities, Small Businesses and Cancer Patients!
This report debunks the outrageous arguments that investment fund managers have made in defense of the "carried interest" loophole.

Key Provisions in H.R. 4213 Would Prevent Abuse of Foreign Tax Credits
This report explains the provisions of H.R. 4213 that would make the U.S. international tax system fairer and more rational and cut down on corporations shifting profits offshore.

Some investment fund managers admit that there is no justification for the carried interest loophole, which allows a part of their compensation (their "carried interest") to be taxed at the low capital gains rate.

On May 18, talk show host Charlie Rose asked Jonathan Nelson, CEO of the private equity firm Providence Equity Partners, if he could "live with it" if Congress taxed his carried interest at ordinary rates instead of the low capital gains rate. Nelson responded, "We could live with it if they changed it overnight. Absolutely."

On May 29, Fred Wilson, a venture capitalist of a firm called Union Square Capital, wrote that his carried interest should be taxed as ordinary income because it's compensation for work rather than gain on an investment. "It is not fair or equitable to other recipients of fee income to give a special tax break to certain kinds of fees and not to others," he explains, before explaining other policy reasons for ending the loophole.

Bill Stanfill, founder of a Colorado-based venture capital firm called TrailHead Ventures, testified before the Ways and Means Committee in favor of closing the loophole back in 2007. He recently asked Senators in a letter (and in several meetings and phone calls), "Why should the 'bonus' (carried interest) earned by v.c.'s be taxed more favorably than the bonus of any other working person — whether teacher, salesperson, athlete or corporate manager?  Life can be unfair, but it does not follow that the government should institutionalize unfairness. Instead, it should level the playing field as much as possible."

Interestingly, even two Republican Senators have indicated that they have no use for the carried interest loophole. FDL News reports that Republican Senators Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine have indicated that they have no objection to closing the loophole.

Investment managers are now lobbying furiously to get what they are calling the "enterprise value" tax dropped from the carried interest loophole closer. This provision in the bill would treat gain from the sale of a carried interest (the partnership interest owned by the investment manager) as ordinary income instead of capital gains.
 
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce threw its considerable weight behind the effort to strip this provision from the bill in a letter last week to members of the House. The Chamber's letter is very misleading — it sounds as though the provision will impact all sales of partnership interests, but, in fact, it affects only the manager's interest. A Wall Street Journal editorial is even more misleading, implying that the income of the investment manager will be taxed twice. This is a complete falsehood. Any partnership income that the manager gets increases his tax basis in his partnership interest which will reduce the gain realized on its ultimate sale.
 
This provision must stay in the bill. Otherwise, investment managers can easily avoid the ordinary rates by selling their "carried" partnership interest and paying capital gains taxes on that income. If they reinvest the sales proceeds back into the investment partnership, they have converted their carried interest into a qualified capital interest and will get capital gains treatment on all subsequent partnership income.

Call your Senators and tell them to stop putting multi-millionaire investment fund managers ahead of struggling families.

Call the Capitol switchboard at 202-224-3121 and ask to be connected to the Senators for your state.

Democrats in Congress are rushing to pass the jobs and "extenders" bill before the end of the week. This bill includes extensions of badly needed unemployment insurance and COBRA health benefits, TANF jobs and emergency funding, Medicaid funding for states and several other important measures. These are the type of measures that many economists, like Mark Zandi of Moody's Economy.com, believe will help stimulate the economy and speed up the recovery. The bill may be passed in the House this week.

Even if the bill passes the House, there may be a serious roadblock in the Senate. Some Democrats in the Senate may oppose or slow down this bill because it includes a provision to clamp down on a loophole allowing investment fund managers to earn hundreds of millions of dollars each year and yet pay taxes at a lower rate than their secretaries.

In other words, some Senate Democrats (and all or most Republicans) would allow unemployment and health benefits to expire for out-of-work families, and would allow jobs funding and Medicaid funding to expire, all to protect a loophole that allows multi-millionaires to pay taxes at lower rates than middle-income people. With every (or nearly every) Republican Senator guaranteed to vote against the bill, the Democrats are struggling to remain unified.

(See CTJ's recent report about the tax loophole-closers in the bill.)

If there was ever a time to call your Senators and give them hell, this is it.

The bill in question is H.R. 4213, the jobs and "extenders" bill. The loophole in question is the infamous "carried interest" loophole that allows wealthy fund managers to pretend that some of the compensation they receive in return for managing other people's money is capital gains. (See CTJ's recent report about carried interest.)

Compensation for work is almost always taxed at ordinary rates as high as 35 percent and subject to payroll taxes of around 15 percent. But this loophole allows the investment fund managers (who can earn hundreds of millions of dollars a year) to pretend that some of their compensation is capital gains, which is subject to an income tax rate of just 15 percent and is not subject to payroll taxes at all.

After the Bush tax cuts expire at the end of this year, the top tax rate for "ordinary" income (meaning income subject to ordinary income tax rates) will go from 35 percent to 39.6 percent and the top rate for capital gains will go from 15 percent to 20 percent. That means that if this loophole is not closed, investment fund managers will be able to cut their income taxes roughly in half from what they should be paying, and will still avoid payroll taxes.

Democratic leaders have already compromised on this issue. Instead of treating all carried interest as "ordinary" income (i.e. not capital gains) as previous House-passed bills would do, the current proposal would treat 75 percent of it as ordinary income.

Incredibly, this has not been enough for some Senators who want to further weaken the provision.

Keep in mind that this has nothing to do with changing the taxation of anything that can honestly be called investment income. The idea behind the tax preference for capital gains is that it encourages people to invest. This is nonsense for reasons we'll get into on another day, but it is the accepted wisdom among many lawmakers who don't have much time to think about economics. But even if we accept this premise, it does nothing to explain why this tax preference should be enjoyed by people who are not investing their own money but merely managing other people's money. That's what the carried interest loophole currently allows.

Five Senators (Scott Brown, Jeanne Shaheen, Bob Casey, Patty Murray, Mark Warner) signed a letter to Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus asking to amend the provision to allow venture capital fund managers to continue to enjoy the loophole.

The basic idea is that venture capital firms create innovation and jobs, unlike some of the other types of investment managers (like hedge fund and buyout fund managers) and this type of investment needs to be encouraged. The letter does not explain why this calls for tax breaks allowing the people who manage the money (not the people putting up their own money) to pay taxes at lower rates than middle-income people.

It has also been rumored that the venture capital industry has put a great deal of effort into persuading the Senators from California, Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein to resist the provision.

Senators Maria Cantwell, John Kerry and Robert Menendez have also voiced concerns. Kerry and Menendez have called for some sort of "compromise" so that investment fund managers do not have to entirely pay at ordinary rates on their carried interest. This could involve taxing a smaller portion of carried interest as ordinary income (taxing less than 75 percent of it as ordinary income).

Another idea being floated would allow for investment managers to continue to enjoy a loophole to the extent that the investments they manage are held for a certain number of years. The idea seems to be to reward "patient" capital rather than those trying to make a quick buck. But of course, this really has nothing to do with rewarding patient capital since it would benefit the people managing the money, not the people actually investing it. Even more alarmingly, it could actually delay certain investments if fund managers are encouraged to hold onto assets for a longer period of time than would otherwise make sense just to enjoy the tax break. Certain deals would be delayed, meaning this provision could actually slow down economic development and job creation.

Staffers for several other Democratic Senators also expressed concerns about the carried interest provision, which seems to mean that ALL Senators need to hear from their constituents on this issue.

No one has explained why making the people who manage investments pay taxes at the same rate as everyone else will discourage investment. The argument that is occasionally trotted out by the industry is that the people managing the money and investments will have to charge more for their services in response to a tax increase. This is simply not true. If they could charge more, they would already being doing that right now. And it's worth remembering that investment fund managers did not decide to charge less when their tax rates were reduced (in 1997 and 2003 when the capital gains rates were cut) so it's illogical to believe that they will charge more in response to a tax increase.

The only explanation for the Senate's resistance that readily comes to mind involves the campaign contributions that investment fund managers make. Senate Democrats are, frankly, in danger of creating an extremely unflattering impression of themselves as beholden to their wealthiest contributors.

Many who have been following this bill are extremely concerned that the Senate may not pass the bill this week, or may pass the bill after amending it to reduce the impact of the carried interest provision. An amended bill could be disastrous in that it might make it impossible for the two chambers to come to agreement and send a bill to the President before the Memorial Day recess.

A new report from Citizens for Tax Justice explains that the new jobs and "extenders" bill released by the chairmen of the House and Senate tax-writing committees on Thursday contains several long-overdue provisions to close tax loopholes. The bill (H.R. 4213) takes aims at corporations that shift profits offshore, investment fund managers who use the "carried interest" loophole to pay lower tax rates than their secretaries, and business people who use the "John Edwards" loophole to avoid their Social Security and Medicare taxes.

Many people are more familiar with the important spending provisions in the bill geared to speed up the economic recovery, including an extension of unemployment insurance and COBRA health care benefits for the unemployed, Medicaid funding for states, TANF jobs and emergency funding for states and other measures that will help boost the economy.

The tax loophole-closing provisions are used to offset the costs of extending several small tax breaks. The spending portion is mostly considered emergency spending that does not have to be paid for under Congress's budget procedures because it is temporary and necessary to prevent the economy from drifting back towards recession. (The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities explains why the spending portions of the bill are economically necessary and fiscally sound.)

Call your lawmakers now and urge them to vote in favor of H.R. 4213. Visit the website for Jobs for America Now, which makes it extremely easy for you to make a toll-free call to your lawmakers to support this bill.

Congress may be ready to close the "carried interest" loophole, which allows wealthy investment fund managers to pay taxes at lower rates than middle-income people.

As a new report from CTJ explains, carried interest is the share of profits that investors pay to compensate certain people for managing their money. The investment managers who receive carried interest have been allowed to pretend that this compensation represents profits on money they have invested themselves, thus entitling them to pay taxes at the low capital gains rate of 15 percent rather than the regular rate of 35 percent that other highly compensated workers pay.

Three times the House has voted to close the “carried interest” loophole and three times the Senate has failed to pass the provision. The latest version of the loophole closer was included in the “tax extenders,” a bill that extends expiring tax breaks, which was approved by the House on December 9. The Senate left the carried interest provision out of its version of the extenders bill, which they passed on March 10, and instead offset the costs of the tax breaks with a provision closing the “black liquor” loophole. However, that provision wound up in the final healthcare package, leaving the Senate extenders bill without enough revenue to cover the costs.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus indicated last week that “carried interest will probably be part of the offsets.” That released a flurry of lobbying activity by taxpayers trying to hold onto their favored status.

Read the report.

The House and Senate yesterday approved the final piece of the historic health care reform that will extend health insurance to 32 million Americans currently uninsured and prevent health insurers from discriminating against people with pre-existing conditions and capping benefits when people are sick. The legislation will also make it easier for small businesses to provide affordable health coverage without locking workers into employer-provided plans that they will lose if they switch jobs.

The bill passed by both chambers yesterday was the smaller "corrections" bill that made several fixes to the larger bill that the House approved on Sunday and that the Senate approved on Christmas Eve. The President signed the larger bill into law on Tuesday.

The corrections bill increased the number of Americans receiving subsidies to make health care affordable and removed some "sweetheart" deals that individual Senators demanded in the larger bill and later came to regret. The corrections bill also scaled back an excise tax on high-cost employer-provided health insurance while adding an expansion of the Medicare tax.

The debate over how to finance health care reform went through several tumultuous stages over the past year. From the start, lawmakers wanted to finance the reform with savings from within the health care system as much as possible, but it was clear that other revenue sources would be needed.This was one of the key sticking points for many lawmakers.

Progressive Action on Revenue for Health Care Reform

In May of last year, CTJ first presented some ideas about how Congress could finance health care reform in a progressive way. All changes made to the tax code in the previous eight years under President George W. Bush had disproportionately benefited the wealthiest Americans. The bailout for the financial industry seemed to reward Wall Street for its mismanagement, at the expense of ordinary taxpayers. It was time for the wealthy investor class to pay their fair share to help fix America's broken health care system.

We worked for several months with a broad coalition of policy advocates, think-tanks, faith-based groups and labor unions to bring progressive financing options to the attention of members of Congress. State-based groups released reports with state-specific figures while national organizations educated lawmakers about progressive financing options and dispelled the myths that were manufactured to block any increase in revenues.

One of the progressive revenue measures that we championed would reform the Medicare tax so that it is more progressive and no longer exempts investment income.

CTJ worked to significantly modify another revenue measure, the excise tax on high-cost employer-provided health insurance plans. We pointed out that this tax, in the form originally proposed, would affect more middle-income taxpayers than most people realized and would actually make the tax system less progressive overall.

Eventually, the excise tax on high-cost employer-provided plans was scaled back to a reasonable level and Congress adopted the proposal to reform the Medicare tax. But the path to this success was not an easy one.

Attempts at Bipartisanship

It's difficult to remember this now, but a year ago lawmakers and their aides, particularly in the Senate, seemed to honestly believe that a bipartisan agreement on health care reform was possible if enough compromises were made. Democrats were negotiating with Republicans. And not just the Republicans that are often considered "moderates" like Olympia Snowe (R-ME) and Chuck Grassley (R-IA), the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee. Democrats even negotiated with Mike Enzi (R-WY), an unabashed conservative and the ranking Republican on another relevant committee.

It did not work. After being heavily involved in health care negotiations, Senator Grassley abruptly changed his tune. He held up a chart on the Senate floor one day with a children's book drawing of a dragon to illustrate the "Debt and Deficit Dragon," and then held up another chart illustrating a character he called "Sur Taxalot." He then rambled on about how "the surtax [included in the House health bill] is a large, heavy, painful weapon, and lethal to America's job engine, the goose that laid the golden egg," and said that Sur Taxalot "does nothing to slow the dragon's exponential growth."

Then Senator Enzi, during a committee markup, offered countless amendments that essentially contradicted the most fundamental goals of reform.

Meanwhile, the grassroots base of the conservative movement made it clear that they could not be appeased by anything other than a continuation of the status quo. Right-wing organizations such as "FreedomWorks," "Americans for Prosperity," and "Conservatives for Patients Rights," organized a campaign to send hecklers to town hall meetings held by any member of Congress who might possibly vote in favor of any health care reform bill.

The anti-reform protesters, whose main goal seemed to be shutting down any public discussion on the topic of reform, even admitted in some cases that they were not constituents of the lawmakers they were heckling. In other cases, those town hall protesters who claimed to be merely “just a mom from a few blocks away” and “not affiliated with any political party” turned out to be Republican party officials.

Congress Moves Forward and then Stops

By the fall, the battle lines were clearly drawn. On September 9, the President made a special address to Congress and told lawmakers that his health care objectives could be accomplished for less money than was spent on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and less money than was lost due to the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy.

A day earlier, CTJ had released figures showing that the Bush tax cuts actually cost two and a half times as much as the House Democrats' health care plan. The figures showed that the President was right. The Bush tax cuts for the richest 5 percent alone cost more than the $900 billion price tag that President Obama put on health reform.

In early November, the House approved a health reform bill that included a surcharge on adjusted gross income (AGI) above $1 million for married couples and AGI over $500,000 for unmarried taxpayers. Only one Republican in the House voted for the bill.

On Christmas Eve, the Senate passed its own health care bill, and this one included the version of the excise tax on high-cost employer-provided health plans that CTJ found problematic. In addition to having less progressive revenue provisions, the Senate bill was also less bold in terms of how it reformed health care. For example, unlike the House bill, the Senate bill did not have a "public option," a government-sponsored health plan that could compete with private insurers.

The bizarre rules of the Senate usually require 60 out of 100 votes to pass legislation. Since Democrats had exactly 60 seats in the Senate, every member of the caucus had to vote for the bill for it to pass.

The House and Senate seemed to be on their way, with the help of the White House, to working out the differences between the two bills. The public option was, unfortunately, lost. The high-income surcharge in the House-passed bill was also out. But the excise tax on employer-provided health plans would be scaled back to a reasonable level and the Medicare tax reform would be included.

Then in January the Democrats lost their 60th vote in the Senate when Scott Brown won the Massachusetts Senate seat formerly held by the late Ted Kennedy.

Pro-Reform Lawmakers Stop Panicking and Start Making History

After a period of hysteria among the members of Congress who supported health care reform, a strategy was devised to finish the job even though the Senate now had only 59 members who supported reform.

First the House would pass the Senate bill, which the President would sign into law. To complete this step, the House passed the Senate bill on Sunday while anti-reform protesters swarmed the Capitol in an attempt to intimidate and harass lawmakers. The President signed this bill into law on Tuesday.

Then Congress needed to pass the various amendments that would make the health reform look like the compromise that the House and Senate were moving towards before the Senate lost its 60th vote for reform. These amendments would all be included in a second bill that the Senate would pass through the "budget reconciliation" process. Reconciliation is simply a procedure to allow the Senate to pass legislation that has some impact on the federal budget picture with a simple majority of votes.

Despite their howls of protest against this procedure, the Republicans had actually used it to enact the Bush tax cuts (which actually worsened the fiscal outlook by running up huge deficits) and several other measures.

The "corrections" bill was passed by the Senate on Thursday using the budget reconciliation process and then was passed by the House later that evening. After this long, tortured journey, the dream that has eluded progressive Americans for a century is now a reality.

Tax policy is an area in which two people can look at the exact same set of facts and come to exactly opposite conclusions. Take the American Enterprise Institute's latest assault on the Medicare tax reform that President Obama has included in his health care reform plan.

The President has adopted an idea that CTJ has championed for months, to change the Medicare tax so that it no longer exempts investment income and to make the tax more progressive. The President would raise the Medicare tax rate for earnings exceeding $200,000 for unmarried taxpayers and $250,000 for married taxpayers, and he would apply the existing 2.9 percent Medicare tax to investment income for those with adjusted gross income (AGI) above $200,000/$250,000.

CTJ's recent report on this proposal found that only 2.3 percent of taxpayers would be affected by this tax in 2014. (The tax would go into effect in 2013).

But that's no comfort to Alan D. Viard and Amy Roden, who argue against this tax reform in AEI's online journal. They write:

"Of course, the high-income cutoffs mean that the new Medicare tax wouldn’t apply to most American savers. But the savers hit by the tax are precisely the ones who provide the largest volume of funds to finance investment in our economy. In 2007, tax returns from households with incomes greater than $200,000 reported 47 percent of all interest income, 60 percent of all dividends, and a staggering 84 percent of all net capital gains. We can’t afford to discourage this group from investing in America’s future."

So they fully agree with us that the sort of income they don't want Congress to tax predominately flows to the rich.

As a judge would say, the facts in this case are not in dispute.

What is in dispute is whether we have to avoid taxing the types of income that mostly flow to the wealthy in order to keep our economy running smoothly. AEI says yes, we need to have preferential rates in some taxes for these types of incomes (like the capital gains and dividends break in the income tax) and wholesale exemptions in other taxes (like the Medicare tax).   

We disagree. We have seen no evidence that the economy functions better when taxes on investment income are slashed or eliminated. Even when it comes to capital gains, which is where libertarians think they have their strongest case, there is no evidence that tax cuts have enhanced economic efficiency. Capital gains income certainly has fluctuated as a result of the ups and downs in the overall economy, and libertarians often attribute the upswings to tax cuts for capital gains. Sadly for them, capital gains realizations have, throughout the Bush years and today, been lower than they were at the end of the Clinton years, when the top rate for capital gains was higher.

Taxing investment income the same way that income from work is taxed is only fair. The President's Medicare tax reform is a step in the right direction. It would end the current exemption in the Medicare tax for investment income to help finance a health care reform that really will help our economy to function more efficiently.

The Senate approved a bill Wednesday that includes an extension of unemployment benefits and COBRA health benefits for unemployed workers through the end of the year, and a short-term extension of Medicaid funding for states and a Medicare "doc fix" (maintaining payments to doctors under Medicare).

The cost of this spending was not offset since it is considered emergency spending to stimulate the economy. But the costs of other provisions in the bill — extensions for $30 billion worth of business tax breaks often called the "tax extenders" — were offset. The biggest revenue-raiser used to offset this costs is a provision to close the "black liquor" loophole. This loophole allows paper-making companies using a carbon-rich by-product as fuel to use a tax credit that is supposed to encourage the use of environmentally-friendly alternative fuels.

But the "black liquor" provision may be used instead in the final health care reform bill. The health care reform bill approved by the House on November 7 of last year (H.R. 3962) included this revenue provision, and the President's recent proposal to bridge the differences between the House and Senate health bills also includes it.

There is another perfectly good revenue-raising provision that the Senate can use to offset most of the cost of the "tax extenders." The version of the tax extenders bill approved by the House on December 9 was supported by CTJ and several other progressive organizations because it included several good provisions, including one to close the infamous "carried interest" loophole. U.S. PIRG and CTJ issued a joint press release yesterday stating their disappointment that the Senate has not done the same.

The carried interest loophole allows billionaires managing hedge funds and buyout funds to pay taxes at a lower rate than middle-income workers. The House has passed legislation three separate times to close the carried interest loophole (including the recent House-passed extenders bill), and both of President Obama’s budget plans have proposed to close it. Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) was quoted in Congress Daily recently saying that closing the carried interest loophole is "on the table."

Until this loophole is closed, the compensation of these fund managers will continue to be taxed at a rate of 15 percent, the preferential rate for capital gains that is supposed to benefit people who invest their own money, not the people who manage it.

New data from the IRS show that in 2007 the richest 400 taxpayers in America increased their incomes by 31 percent over the previous year, increased their share of total income in America, and paid an even lower effective tax rate than ever before.

Writing for Tax Analysts, David Cay Johnston finds that the average income of the richest 400 grew from $263.3 million in 2006 to $344.8 million in 2007. Meanwhile, their effective income tax rate fell from 17.17 percent in 2006 to 16.62 percent in 2007.

As usual, a major cause of the low effective tax rates is the preferential rate for capital gains and stock dividends, which are taxed at a top rate of 15 percent instead of the top rate of 35 percent that applies to other income for the very rich. Capital gains made up 66.3 percent of income for the top 400 in 2007, up from 62.8 percent in 2006.

The data seem to highlight the need to allow the Bush tax cuts, which cut the top rate for capital gains and stock dividends to 15 percent, to expire as scheduled at the end of 2010.

The report released last week by Citizens for Tax Justice on the President's budget argued that Congress should at least allow the Bush tax cuts to expire for the rich (which Obama defines as married couples with incomes above $250,000 and unmarrieds with income above $200,000) and should enact at least as many revenue-raisers as the President proposes.