Our Congress, that model of prudence and fiscal discipline, passed yet another tax cut yesterday. This one is projected to cost the government $140 billion over the next ten years. It started as an attempt to repeal a subsidy that had been ruled illegal, and had resulted in tariffs on some US goods. That would have saved us $5.6 billion. But the Congress, in its infinite wisdom, decided first to grant a corporate tax cut to manufacturers to make up for the lost subsidy, then to redefine ‘manufacturing’ to include lots of corporations which hadn’t qualified for the subsidy in the first place, and finally to grant a slew of other provisions, including
“hundreds of smaller measures that benefit restaurant owners and Hollywood producers; makers of bows, arrows and sonar fish finders; NASCAR track owners; and importers of Chinese ceiling fans. Sen. Herb Kohl (D-Wis.), an owner of the Milwaukee Bucks basketball team, voted “present” yesterday in deference to a provision favoring sports franchise owners.
Under the bill, foreign gamblers would no longer have to report dog-track and horse-track winnings for taxation. Farmers would receive new tax breaks on ethanol and distressed livestock sold during droughts. Native Alaskan whaling captains could deduct some expenses as charitable contributions. Small oil and gas drillers, already buoyed by record fuel prices, would receive new tax breaks for marginal wells. Railroads would garner a special credit for maintaining their tracks.”
“It absurdly rewards tobacco farmers, and absentee tobacco landlords, without imposing even the minimal regulation on tobacco that the nation’s biggest cigarette maker had agreed to.
Now, I sympathize with foreign gamblers, absentee tobacco landlords, and makers of bows and arrows. Really, I do. However, I also sympathize with ordinary citizens, unprotected by lobbying firms, who will have to deal with this:
That’s a graph from Brad DeLong, described as ‘Extended CBO baseline with AMT reform and extensions of expiring tax provisions’. Put otherwise, the size of the deficit as estimated by the Congressional Budget Office, given two proposals that Bush is committed to. Our brand new $140 billion in debt over the next ten years is added to this. And you and I have to pay it back, along with the interest. I’m not sure I feel that warmly towards foreign gamblers. Do you?
PS: This is my first ever attempt to embed an image in a post. It looks a bit odd in preview, and has taken forever. Sorry if my complete ignorance of how to do these things somehow leads to disaster…
NOTE: edited to remove mistake. This will make some of the first comments seem to make no sense. They did.
Ugh, now that is disgusting. And further proof that subsidies just never die.
I am unsurprised to see this pass through this Congress. More than any in my living memory, our current collection of Congresscritters seems to have little or no concept of fiscal prudence, nor of the notion that all this money they’re spending (or revenue they’re removing, which amounts to the same thing) has to come from somewhere.
The real question is, given the number of conservatives who have understandable problems with the way Congress and this administration have been spending, will Bush exercise some good sense by exercising his veto pen?
If they were cutting taxes across the board, that would be merely irresponsible. But this sort of targeted special deals takes us into the realm of cronyism.
Whores. Hey, at least Zell Miller got his ceiling fans.
BTW, is that $50 billion figure right? I thought it was $5.6.
Just Asking
Put aside the ballooning deficit. Why, exactly, is it a bad thing for a tax cut to “[Give] Business More and More,” as the New York Times so “neutrally” put it? Who creates the jobs? Who does the research? Who
So did I.
You’re right, it is 5.6. I will edit it in a moment. But what’s interesting is that I had thought so too. I was working off newspaper articles, the topmost one was a NYT editorial (link) that said $50 billion; I checked it against the next one (LA Times), since I had remembered $5 billion, and it said $50 too, so I figured I was wrong. As best I can tell, thought, it is $5.6 billion. I can only conclude that either they are talking about very different things, or typos are endemic.