[Vision2020] House Passes Bill Linking Tax Cuts, Minimum Wage

[Tom Hansen]

>From Today's (February 17, 2007) Spokesman Review -

"The House bill would also raise revenue by closing a loophole that permits
wealthy taxpayers to shift income to their children and avoid higher taxes
on capital gains and dividends."

Representative Bill Sali, who continues to be inaccessible to the citizens
of Idaho from his website at http://sali.house.gov/, voted against this
bill.

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House passes bill linking tax cuts, minimum wage

Jim Kuhnhenn 
Associated Press
February 17, 2007

WASHINGTON - The House overwhelmingly approved business tax breaks worth
$1.8 billion over 10 years on Friday, a key step toward forging a
congressional compromise on increasing the minimum wage.

The vote on the tax cuts was 360-45.

Passage of a wage hike for the lowest-paid workers now depends on how
quickly the House and Senate work out differences between their tax
packages. The Senate tax breaks - worth $8.3 billion - are more than four
times bigger than the ones passed in the House.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., said House and Senate
negotiators could reconcile differences in the bills within two or three
weeks.

"The minimum wage provision is going to trump all of this and is going to
drive us to get this thing done pretty quickly," Baucus said.

Under the House bill, small businesses would see an extension in some tax
write-offs that are scheduled to expire and would be able to continue to
claim a tax credit for hiring disadvantaged workers. The legislation also
would ensure that restaurants, which can deduct Social Security taxes paid
on tips above the minimum wage, would not be hurt by the wage hike.

The House bill would also raise revenue by closing a loophole that permits
wealthy taxpayers to shift income to their children and avoid higher taxes
on capital gains and dividends.

The House vote displayed the influence the Senate's Republican minority can
have on congressional legislation. House Democrats had demanded a minimum
wage bill without any tax provisions. Senate Democrats insisted that without
some tax relief, the minimum wage would lose necessary Republican backing.

Senate Republican officials predicted the final tax package would be closer
to the House version than the Senate's. Small business groups have sided
with the Senate, but the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is lobbying for the House
version.

Eager to begin their weeklong Presidents Day recess, lawmakers spent little
time debating the tax cuts and acted under expedited procedures that
required a two-thirds majority, a threshold the vote easily met.

The minimum wage bill had become the new Democratic majority's first
legislative challenge. The $2.10 an hour increase - from $5.15 to $7.25 over
two years - was a Democratic campaign issue last year and was at the top of
the party's legislative agenda. But the bill stumbled when House and Senate
Democrats disagreed on the need for tax cuts.

With its $8.3 billion tax package, the Senate would extend tax credits and
tax write-offs, and provides new tax preferences to certain companies. It
also would eliminate some tax shelters and add new taxes on lawsuit
settlements and punitive damage payments and on deferred compensation
packages for higher paid executives.

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Seeya round town, Moscow.

Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho

"Forty percent of the mass of every tree in the forest is crude oil.  Stop
and think about that.  We call them fossil fuels because they used to be
live stuff, now is in the ground is turned into crude oil." 

- Bill Sali (September 21, 2006)
http://www.tomandrodna.com/Stuff/Sali_Tree_Energy.mp3