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Monday, December 11, 2006
$44 Billion in Tax Breaks and a QB Sneak
In the early morning hours on Saturday, the Senate voted 79-9 to combine and adopt two House bills in a sprawling $45.1 billion tax, trade, energy, and health package entitled the Tax Relief and Health Care Act of 2006."
The final version of the bill differed little from the version summarized here.
The $35.9 billion in tax break extensions includes the following major provisions (costs of two-year two extensions -- covering 2006 retroactively and 2007; five-year costs indicated by *):
- R&D tax credit -- $16.5 billion
- State and local sales tax dedecution -- $5.5 billion
- College tuition dedeuction -- $3.3 billion
- Welfare-to-Work credit -- $980 million *
- Teachers' Classroom Expenses -- $380 Million
The bill also included a $4.9 billion provision to lift federal spending for retired miners' health benefits and abandoned mine reclamation, $3.5 billion in (mostly alternative) energy tax breaks, and $1 billion in health savings accounts incentives.
This last provision was snuck into the bill, according to the Washington Post, by "several major business lobbies eager to reduce their medical-insurance costs [and] Ways and Means Committee Chairman Bill Thomas (R-CA) [who] championed it and pressed it through to final approval in the wee hours Saturday morning."
Posted by Dana Chasin
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