Corporate Tax Breaks Removed From Senate Jobs Bill

Here's a good analysis of the "tax extenders" component that Sen Reid removed from the Senate jobs bill.

cross-posted from Huffington Post

The K Street Kickback: The Giveaway That Reid Stripped From The Jobs Bill:

"The GOP is outraged that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) spiked the bipartisan jobs bill unveiled on Thursday, dropping some of its major provisions. But what exactly was cut from the bill that made them so angry -- was it the loss of the COBRA subsidies or the unemployment extension?

No, it was the K Street Kickback, which extends huge tax credits to large corporations. Unlike the Louisiana Purchase or the Cornhusker Kickback, which won the support of Sens. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) and Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) for the health care reform bill, the K Street payoff is counted in the tens of billions of dollars, rather than a few hundred million. While Democratic senators come cheap, getting Republicans to buy into a jobs bill seems to cost taxpayers serious money.

One of the top priorities of Big Business lobbyists is the 'tax extender' issue, the extension of expiring tax credits worth tens of billions of dollars to major corporations, which is favored by Republicans..."

"To Chuck Marr, director of federal tax policy at the Washington-based Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, tax extenders don't belong in the jobs bill."

"They have nothing to do with the jobs bill, nothing to do with unemployment," said Marr, a former adviser to former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle. "These shouldn't distract from the task at hand, and the task at hand is that one in ten people are unemployed..."

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Posted by Chuck Bell at 4:34 AM