Outline of Economic Recovery Package from House Ways and Means Committee

An outline of the provisions under the Ways and Means Committee’s Jurisdiction included in the Economic Recovery package follows:

Tax Relief for Individuals

· “Making Work Pay Credit”

· Expand Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC)

· Increase in child tax credit, $0 floor

Education

· Simplification of education credits w/ $2,500 credit for first four years of higher education expenses (increase income limitations), with credit partially-refundable (40% refundable)

Housing

· Remove repayment requirement on $7,500 first-time home buyer credit for homes purchased after 2008 and before termination of credit (June 30, 2009)

· Coordination provisions with new grant program for low-income housing being designed by the Financial Services Committee

Business

· Bonus depreciation

· 5-year carryback of net operating losses (excluding companies receiving TARP benefits, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac)

· Extension of increased small business expensing

· Expand work opportunity tax credit for disconnected youth and unemployed, recently-discharged veterans

· Prospectively repeal Treasury Section 382 ruling

State and Local Governments

· Allow financial institutions to purchase State and local bonds and other changes

· Repeal AMT limits on new private activity bonds

· Taxable bond option for governmental bonds

· School construction bonds

· One year deferral of withholding tax on government contractors

Distressed Areas

· Provide tax exempt bonds and tax credit bonds to “recovery zones.” These tax exempt bonds and tax credit bonds can be used for a wide array of purposes to stimulate economic development, including job training and education. A “recovery zone” would be an area within a State, city or county that has exhibited high unemployment, foreclosures or poverty. These bonds would be allocated automatically to States and large municipal governments based on the number of unemployed individuals within that area.

Energy Tax Incentives

· Long-term extension of renewable energy production tax credit

· Temporary election to claim the investment tax credit in lieu of the production tax credit

· Coordination provisions with new grant program for renewable energy projects being designed by the Energy and Commerce Committee (sections 45 and 48 projects)

· Clean Renewable Energy Bonds (“CREBs”)

· Qualified Energy Conservation Bonds

· Energy efficiency and conservation tax incentives under sections 25C, 25D and 48

· Smart energy conservation, energy efficiency, and renewable energy R&D credit

· Refueling property credit expansions

Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA)

Updates, modernizes and expands TAA to cover service workers, and substantially improves and extends coverage to manufacturing workers
Triples funds for job training
Unemployment Insurance (UI)

· Encourage UI Modernization

· Continue the Emergency Unemployment Compensation Program

· Increase UI checks by $25/week

Additional Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF)

· Provide additional TANF Contingency Funds to serve needy families

Supplemental Security Income (SSI)

Provide a one-time additional SSI Payment to Low-Income elderly and disabled recipients
Child Support Enforcement Funding

· Restore federal funding for Child Support Enforcement for 2 years

COBRA Healthcare for the Unemployed

· Provides temporary subsidies for health insurance coverage to those who have lost their jobs.

· Extends the availability of unsubsidized COBRA coverage for older and tenured workers beyond the 18 months provided under current law

Health Information Technology (HIT)

Establishes standards, payment incentives and privacy protections to encourage the widespread adoption of health information technology.
Extends Moratorium on Selected Medicare Regulations through October 1, 2009

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• House Ways and Means Committee :: Outline of Economic Recovery Package

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Beyond Ideology, Politics, and Guesswork: The Case for Evidence-Based Policy (revised 2008)

U.S. public policy has increasingly been conceived, debated, and evaluated through the lenses of politics and ideology. The fundamental question–Will the policy work?–too often gets short shrift or even ignored. A remedy is evidence-based policy — a rigorous approach that draws on careful data collection, experimentation, and both quantitative and qualitative analysis to determine what the problem is, which ways it can be addressed, and the probable impacts of each of these ways. Examples of how evidence informs good policy and lack of evidence can invite bad include health insurance coverage, welfare reform, sentencing policy, and redress for housing discrimination.

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Tax Code and Health Insurance Coverage : Before the House Committee on the Budget

In this testimony Burman argues that there are limitations to using tax credits to expand health insurance coverage. A program of health insurance tax credits combined with reforms of the market for nongroup health insurance could significantly expand coverage, but at a very high cost. The testimony summarizes the current tax treatment of health insurance, the effects of tax subsidies on coverage and health care costs, and discusses ways that tax credits might affect health coverage. Burman offers recommendations and adds that the most cost-effective approach to expanding health insurance coverage may not be a tax subsidy at all, but an expansion of an existing public program, such as Medicaid, S-CHIP, or Medicare.

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Make the Tax Cuts Work

New York Times, January 23, 2008 – Since 2001, official Washington’s answer to every policy question has been the same. What should we do with a big surplus? Tax cuts. How do we beat back global terrorism? Tax cuts. Increase energy independence? Rebuild New Orleans? Expand health insurance coverage? Tax cuts, tax cuts, tax cuts. Now comes another question to which taxes have long been at least part of the answer. How do we stimulate the economy to prevent or shorten a recession?

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