Saturday, July 30, 2011

Reid's Proposal---A Move Against Bush Tax Cuts?

Sen. Jeff Session (R-AL) lays out the case (via an interesting story on Reid's proposal in The Daily Caller):
Second, Reid’s amendment would “deem” a budget resolution for fiscal years 2012 and 2013 (through the next election). Contrary to the requirements of law, the Senate has refused to adopt a budget for 821 days. Reid’s amendment would give the Democrat majority in the Senate an excuse to not pass a budget for another two years, or 626 days. Without any hearings or debate, section 102 of Senator Reid’s amendment would deem budget allocations for all Senate committees. For most committees, the budget allocation would be set at the CBO baseline. This means none of the authorizing committees would be encouraged to look at the automatic spending increases in their areas and root out inefficiencies and ensure value for the taxpayer dollar. On the revenue side, the deemed budget resolutions would assume the tax increases associated with the expiration of the tax cuts in current law. That means that legislation to extend any of the tax cuts would be harder to enact because it would face a point of order under section 311 of the Budget Act for reducing revenues.