off the charts
POLICY INSIGHT
BEYOND THE NUMBERS
BEYOND THE NUMBERS

- It would have given back more than half of the revenue raised by the 2012 “fiscal cliff” legislation. If it had become law, more than 85 percent of the deficit reduction achieved since 2010 would have come from budget cuts rather than new revenues.
- Congressional Republicans insist that future congressional budget plans balance the budget in ten years with no new revenues, cuts in Social Security benefits for current retirees, or defense cuts. Such a plan would already demand deep cuts in important areas; the extenders package would require even deeper cuts. As incoming House Budget Committee Chairman Tom Price (R-GA) said recently, “anything that’s made permanent now makes it more difficult to get to [budget] balance.”
- While permanently extending and expanding tax benefits mostly for businesses, the package failed to extend temporary tax provisions for low-income working families with children. Those provisions — in the Earned Income Tax Credit and the low-income piece of the Child Tax Credit — lift more than 16 million people out of poverty or closer to the poverty line each year, including nearly 8 million children. Their omission would make it less likely they will continue beyond 2017, when they are slated to expire.
- If policymakers make a number of extenders permanent now, without paying for them, they won’t have to offset the cost of making them permanent as part of tax reform. That would enable them to produce a tax reform bill that cuts the top tax rate more deeply, curbs fewer special-interest tax breaks, or both — and yet still is labeled “revenue neutral.”
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