WASHINGTON (AP) – An eleventh-hour drive by the White House and Congress to strike a deal extending dozens of mostly obscure tax cuts could end up delivering major political victories for President Barack Obama and House Speaker Paul Ryan.
With little more than a year left in office and facing a frequently hostile GOP-led Congress, Obama was hoping an agreement would burnish his legacy by making permanent some expiring tax cuts for millions of families with lower-to middle incomes, younger children and college students. Many congressional Democrats would revel in achieving that, especially with uncertainty about which party will control both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue in 2017.
Enactment would mean “one of the strongest anti-poverty efforts in a long time,” said Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden, top Democrat on the tax-writing Senate Finance Committee.
Republicans wanted to make permanent expiring business tax breaks worth perhaps hundreds of billions of dollars. GOP lawmakers in the Senate and House would consider that alone to be a victory.
Yet for Ryan, R-Wis., accomplishing that would also make one of his top 2016 priorities more affordable – an election-year bill revamping the tax code. Renewing those business tax breaks now would mean he wouldn’t have to include them in next year’s sweeping overhaul, freeing up money Republicans could instead use to help push income tax rates lower.