Update 569 — BBB and Equity:What the Tax Provisions Mean Six months ago, the Treasury Department released the Green Book detailing President Biden’s vision for a more equitable tax system, aimed at getting large firms and the very wealthy to pay their fair share. The key elements of this initiative are pending in Congress in the Build …
Update 567 — These Two Shall Pass: Virginia’s Message for the Midterms Democrats in Congress and nationally, pausing a moment to reflect on electoral setbacks in Virginia and elsewhere on Tuesday, might consider whether the cause was the failure to pass BBB or even BIF. We can speculate about what impact passage of these bills …
Update 566 – Building a BBB Budget:Can It Be Balanced by Billionaires? Last weekend, Senator Kyrsten Sinema nixed BBB proposals to raise corporate, individual and capital gains tax rates to pay for the bulk of the bill. Scrambling to fill the close to $1 fiscal hole, Democrats have seized upon the billionaire tax option. The plan proposed …
Update 565 — BBB Faces Housing Crisis:Residential Infrastructure and Recovery Democrats’ negotiations on Build Back Better are gathering momentum, as evidenced by the stream of detailed pare-backs and concessions reported this week. But progressives are mounting a defense of the bill’s housing provisions. Congress may cut housing outlays from the initially proposed $327 billion to as …
Update 562 — 1, 2, 3, What’re We Fighting For?Democrats’ BBB Message Mixed or Missing? With the ticking time bomb that is (still) the debt limit to be reset for December 3, the conversation on the Hill returns to reconciliation negotiations. President Joe Biden spoke in Michigan this week, campaigning for the reconciliation and infrastructure bills being …
Update 561 — Shutdown Narrowly Averted;Negotiations on BIF and BBB Intensify Yesterday, Congress managed to avoid a government shutdown by passing a stopgap continuing resolution to keep the federal government open through December 3. Speaker Pelosi also put off a vote last night on BIF, the bipartisan $1.2 infrastructure bill, when the needed 218 votes could not …
Update 560 — Naming Names…SlowlyStatus of Economic Policy Nominations To date, the administration has nominated candidates for about a third of the executive branch appointments that require Senate confirmation. Around a third of those have been confirmed. This applies to economic, fiscal, financial policy positions, to departments like Treasury, and agencies like the SEC. The nominations …
Update 559 — The Payfor Package:Necessity is the Mother of Taxation A reflexive assumption of national opposition to taxes, and support for tax cuts, seemed to have had an axiomatic grip on fiscal politics from the nation’s birth. But the conventional wisdom was seriously challenged by Trump’s $1.9 trillion tax cut of 2017 and left the …
Update 556 – Engine of Robust Recovery:FY22 Spending Fuels Building Back Better The House and Senate have two weeks to complete work on a federal budget for FY22, aka the Build Back Better Act. This bill codifies President Biden’s economic, fiscal, and social agenda, creating jobs, cutting taxes, and lower costs for working families. Payfors are making …
