Posted on 10/16/2002 4:33:05 PM PDT by GeneD
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republicans in the House of Representatives said on Wednesday they decided to shelve tax break legislation for investors, citing Senate inaction and disagreement among themselves over items to bring to a vote ahead of the congressional elections.
Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert of Illinois said Republicans at a meeting on Wednesday decided it was better to wait until after the Nov. 5, congressional election to deal with the tax bill some Republicans were pushing to help investors and individual retirement account holders weather the current market slump.
"There is just not total agreement on it," Hastert told reporters after the meeting.
House Republicans had been planning to take up the investors tax bill in the face of Democratic opposition before lawmakers left Washington for final weeks of campaigning.
The bill would have allowed investors to deduct more of their investment losses against ordinary income and raised the age at which retirement account holders would have to begin withdrawals to 75 from 70.
In addition to the investors tax breaks, the legislation was to include provisions to deal with companies that move offshore to avoid U.S. taxes. The bill also would have provided an extension of unemployment benefits limited to those states with the highest jobless rates.
Ways and Means Committee Chairman Bill Thomas of California said Republicans decided it was best to put the legislation on the shelf rather than negotiate among themselves over what other measures merited a vote before the elections.
"Everything is on the shelf that everybody wants, which is a long list of items," Thomas said. "We are just not going to begin negotiating with ourselves."
He said the Republican-controlled House has passed a number of measures that the Democrat-led Senate has yet to take up.
"Why keep doing things over and over when it is clear the Senate isn't going to act," Thomas said.
The tax bill would have been in response to Democratic attacks against President Bush's economic policies and accusations that the administration is making rosy pronouncements about the economy while ignoring rising unemployment, higher poverty rates and a weak stock market.
House Democratic Leader Richard Gephardt of Missouri earlier this week unveiled a $200 billion plan that included a one-time tax rebate for working families to help revive the lackluster U.S. economy.
Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill initially said he was open to suggestions on the economy, but on Wednesday criticized Gephardt's plan saying it was "back-door spending" presented as a tax cut.
The AMT (alternative minimum tax) and social security confiscation kicked in by 401K contributions should be a high priority for republicans. The AMT is well known, but the latter isn't. Scott Burns had an article about the latter this weekend.
If they had a strong pro-economic growth policy coming from the White House, they could do it.
It's dead for this session, which makes no difference anyway, since at least 50 bills are stalled in the Senate.
Of course, you knew that already.
Can't they give me some reasons to vote for them other than being better than the alternative?
Nope.
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