Examining the Tax Parts of the New Bipartisan Deal

We’ve issued two pieces on the bipartisan congressional deals announced last night:

• Assessing the Tax Provisions of the Bipartisan Budget and Tax Deals:  This statement from Robert Greenstein explains that the tax parts of the deals include provisions that mark a major achievement in reducing poverty and helping poor and modest-income working families, but also disturbing provisions that could cause budget deficits and health care costs to rise substantially over time.  Assessing the tax provisions as a whole depends on the standard one uses:  whether one compares them to exemplary tax policy or to what policymakers likely would do in the absence of these deals.
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• Tax Agreement Makes Permanent Key Improvements to Working-Family Tax Credits:  This brief report describes the improvements to the Child Tax Credit and Earned Income Tax Credit and explains that making them permanent will lift about 16 million people above or closer to the poverty line, including about 8 million children (see graph).