A $60 billion bill the Senate passed to continue expiring tax cuts and shelter 14 million families from higher taxes faces a White House veto threat because it also includes a hefty tax increase for oil companies.
The legislation passed by senators early Friday would spare millions of families from paying increased taxes through the alternative minimum tax. Much of the bill, passed 64-33, preserves tax cuts approved in previous years that are set to expire unless lawmakers keep them alive.
But unlike a bill assembled by the House tax writing committee, it does not preserve lower tax rates for capital gains and dividends scheduled to disappear at the end of 2008. Congress lowered the maximum tax rate on that investment income to 15 percent in 2003, and many Republicans want to act this year to keep those rates in place in 2009 and 2010.
It was doubtful whether the House would vote on its bill before leaving for the Thanksgiving holiday. “It’s a possibility that we’ll move it if we’re ready to move it,” Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., said early Friday. “We’ll have to see where the votes are.”
If the average American can’t see how wrong this legislation is, well, then they deserve politicians like Dumbya, Lurch Frist and the wrestling coach, Denny (Fat Boy) Hastert.
Their tax cut fetishism, which is heaping detb on our children, is symptomatic of their moral degeneracy.