Skip to content
News and updates

News and updates

What We’re Reading This Week, October 30 to November 3

Posted on

Here’s a selection of articles we’ve read this week.

John Boehner Unchained – To outsiders, Boehner might just be the happiest man alive, a liberated retiree who spends his days swirling merlot and cackling at Speaker Paul Ryan’s misfortune. The truth is more complicated. At 67, Boehner is liberated—to say what he spent many years trying not to say; to smoke his two packs a day without undue stress; to chuckle at the latest crisis in Washington and whisper to himself those three magic words: “Not my problem.”  Read more from Politico.

House GOP Tax Plan Arrives – This week the House released its tax reform plan. Read all about it right here on our blog.

How the Russians Took Over Social Media – Wednesday, Congress released some of the 3,000 Facebook ads and Twitter accounts created by Russian operatives to sway American voters. You can explore them in an analysis the Post published here. These disturbing messages, seen by up to 126 million Americans, raise thorny questions about Silicon Valley’s responsibility for vetting the information it publishes. Read more from the Washington Post.

Anatomy of a Russian Facebook Ad –  Among the ads released by lawmakers, there’s a wide variety of content, tone and visual style. While some mimic Internet memes intended for easy consumption and sharing, others take the form of more-traditional campaign-style ads or promoted events.  Read more from the Washington Post.

In Conversation: Jimmy Kimmel – In the space of six weeks, this seemingly apolitical 49-year-old comedian, who, since his show debuted in 2003, has done exceptionally well by coming across as late-night’s unexceptional guy, had transformed himself into a riveting teller of truths — with the ratings bump to match. Read more on Vulture.

House Science Committee Chairman to Retire

Posted on

In a statement released earlier today, Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX), Chairman of the House Science Committee, announced that he plans to retire at the end of this term.

Currently in his 16th term, he has been a key player in a number of areas of critical interest to academia and higher education.  Among other issues, as chair of the Science Committee, he has been involved with the recent debates around federal support for social and behavioral sciences as well as the intense discussions around earth and climate science.  In the past, including during his stint as the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, he has been a critical player in immigration and visa-related issues.

Tax Cuts and Jobs Act

Posted on

The House Republican Leadership unveiled their much-awaited Tax Cuts and American Jobs act.

At first glance, the measure would:

  • cut the corporate tax rate to 20%;
  • reduce the seven individual tax brackets into four;
  • nearly double the standard deduction to $24K (married), $18,300 (head of household), and 12,200 (single);
  • increase the child care tax credit to $1,600 (from $1000);
  • change the mortgage interest deduction to apply to house loans up to $500,000 on new home purchases while existing homes would be grandfathered;
  • repeal the student-loan interest deduction;
  • private universities with assets exceeding $100,000 a student would pay a new 1.4% excise tax on their net investment income; and
  • businesses would no longer be able to deduct entertainment expenses, though today’s rules for business meals would remain.

The charitable deduction will not change, and the tax provisions related to 401(k)s are unchanged.

The bill text is here.

A section-by-section of the measure is here. 

Federal Relations is still going thought the measure and will continue to provide updates.

This Week: CHIP and Taxes

Posted on

The House and Senate are back this today for what will be the long slog until Thanksgiving. There’s a ton of to-do items on the agenda, including tax reform, raising the debt ceiling, FY 2018 appropriations, the annual National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), and the list goes on. The focus for the House this week will be extending the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), while the Senate will continue on more judicial nominations. Both Houses will begin to turn efforts into tax reform.

The House is set to unveil their version of a tax reform bill on November 1 and a mark up in committee shortly thereafter.  Tentatively, this means, the House could consider the measure on the Floor during the week of the November 6. After passage, the measure would move to the Senate the week of November 13 for mark-ups in the Senate Finance and Energy and Natural Resources Committees and floor consideration during the week of the 20, which is Thanksgiving Recess. Per the agreed expedited process, the tax measure would be considered as a reconciliation bill, so it would only get 20 hours of debate and a vote-a-rama — it could be considered in three days.  While this schedule is incredibly ambitious, this framework is the working schedule as of now.

The House— one month after funding for the CHIP has lapsed — is gearing up for a vote on extending funding for the federal program, which insures nine million children in the US. Both parties have been negotiating for weeks. Earlier this month, the House Energy and Commerce Committee approved a measure to fund CHIP for five years with zero Democratic support. Democrats opposed cutting dollars from Obamacare’s public health fund to pay for the measure — so it wasn’t sent to the floor for a vote. However, the GOP is now moving forward as the clock keeps ticking: several states are slated to run out of CHIP money in the next few weeks.

Meanwhile, at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, ehe Administration is set to announce a new Federal Reserve Chair this week and keep up the drum beat on opioids, but the Mueller investigation might make that difficult.

Stay tuned.

House Agrees to Senate Budget and Tax Guidelines

Posted on

Today, the House adopted the Senate-passed FY2018 budget resolution, H. Con. Res. 71, that would lay down the foundation for tax cuts.  While a budget resolution is traditionally used to set up the broad parameters for spending for a given fiscal year, this year’s resolution is being used as a vehicle to set up procedures to move changes to the tax code. The measure passed by a vote of 216-212 and allows allows for fast-track consideration of tax overhaul legislation, without being subject to filibuster in the Senate.

Assuming that the budget resolution would pass, the House leadership announced earlier this week a draft tax measure would be unveiled next week pending the approval of the budget in the House. With passage, the House Ways & Means Committee, which has jurisdiction on all revenue raisers, is on track to release their tax bill as early as November 1.  What the House’s reformed package will contain is still a moving target. There have been many issues raised with proposed cuts and offsets to such a measure — the most recent issue is the State and Local Tax (SALT) deduction. Eliminating this deduction has been a big issue for Republicans in blue, high-tax states, such as New York and California, who want to preserve the deduction. Other recent issues include limiting the 401(k) pretax contributions, expanding the child care tax credit, and including Unrelated Business Income Tax (UBIT) as an offset for tax cuts.

Stay tuned.