$1.6-trillion budget deal revealed
Speaker Paul Ryan unveiled a $1.6-trillion funding and tax package on late Tuesday night after weeks of negotiations with Democrats.
The 2,009-page bill can be found here. As compromises go, it could probably have been better. A lot of amendments important to conservatives were left out of the final package. For instance, there is no ban on admitting Syrian refugees, and some of the tax provisions wanted by Democrats are in.
Here are a few of the major tax items in the bill:
Ryan unveiled the details of the agreement while the political world was fixated on the fifth GOP presidential debate in Las Vegas.
He told colleagues that the spending bill will postpone the "Cadillac tax" on expensive healthcare plans and the tax package will place a two-year moratorium on the medical device tax, two critical sources of revenue for ObamaCare.
The Speaker told rank-and-file Republicans that they won more victories in the tax package than in the $1.1 trillion omnibus funding bill, which has been largely stripped of the policy amendments that Republicans wanted, according to a GOP lawmaker in the room.
Rep. Kevin Brady (R-Texas), chairman of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee, said the tax package provides $560 billion through breaks that will no longer expire — and $650 billion in total tax relief — over 10 years.
The text of that bill, which runs more than 200 pages, was posted online just before midnight.
Several lawmakers who heard the presentation said the omnibus includes a two-year delay of the Cadillac tax, something senior officials in the Obama administration opposed.
Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid (Nev.) made an all-out push for including the Cadillac tax freeze, which is a top priority of labor unions, whose members would be hit especially hard by it.
The deal also includes a five-year extension of tax breaks for wind and solar energy companies, something Democrats wanted.It extends the 30 percent solar investment tax credit and a credit for solar-powered energy efficient properties for three years before phasing it down the final two.
The deal also extends the wind protection tax credit for two years before phasing it down over three years until the 2022 expiration date.
In exchange, Republicans have secured language in the omnibus that would lift the ban on exporting crude oil from the United States that has been in place since the 1970s.
Ryan emphasized that many popular business tax provisions, including the research and development tax credit and the Section 179 small-business expensing deduction, would be locked into law by the agreement.
More bad news for Obamacare with the delay of the Cadillac tax and medical device tax. But it is disappointing that the solar and wind tax credits remain in place. And lifting the ban on exporting crude oil would have been better if passed a year or two ago, when prices weren't in free fall.
But $650 billion in tax relief over 10 years is not bad, especially since deficits are expected to rise back to a trillion dollars a year by 2020. The tax package is probably the best that Republicans can expect at this point.
That won't matter to conservatives, who will no doubt be angry that many of their policy riders were left out of the final package. Ryan has already said that he will rely on Democrats to help push the package through, so barring some unforeseen opposition, the bill is likely to sail through both houses of Congress.