Listen Live

(INDIANAPOLIS) – Republicans are doubling down on last year’s tax cut.

The House plans a vote on making your tax cut permanent.  Corporate tax cuts in the bill signed nine months ago already are, but your individual tax cut  expires in seven years. Unlike corporate tax cuts, your individual tax cut expires in seven years. The House package would make it permanent, while adding new tax breaks for startups. 

The original bill was projected to increase the deficit by nearly a half-trillion dollars. Indiana Congressman Jim Banks notes economic growth was nearly a full point stronger than expected last quarter. Those estimates by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office call for slower growth the next two years, but Banks argues the CBO underestimated the economic boost from the first round of cuts. He says it’s possible the tax cuts won’t swell the deficit at all, even though corporate tax collections are down by about a third.

But Banks acknowledges a House vote will be essentially symbolic, since the bill’s expected to be dead on arrival in the Senate. The whole reason the original bill included the expiration date was to make it eligible for a rule that prevented a filibuster and allowed it to pass with 50 votes. The new bill would require a 60-vote supermajority. Banks says the House vote is a way to “show the American people we’re serious about continuing the progress” on the economy.
 

(Photo: valeriva/Thinkstock)