The vote was overwhelming as well as bipartisan: 357 to 70. The bill expands child tax credits on income tax filings -- not as much as similar temporary measures during the pandemic, but more than the level they had reverted to. It also expands corporate tax breaks, which was what House Speaker Mike Johnson chose to focus on when discussing it.
The choice didn't help: the far fringes of the GOP voted against it -- mostly, the House Freedom Caucus.* So did the Dems on the far left; someone else can tote up how many DSA-affliated nays there were. (Voting details here.)
The Tax Relief for American Families and Workers Act of 2024 (H.R. 7024) worked the way important stuff in Congress is supposed to work: the middle pulled together and got it done while the extremes fumed and barked. The far Right tried to jam it up in a way that required a two-thirds majority to get it through, and the vote beat that threshold handily. Now it's off to the Senate, where -- surprise! -- the more-extreme among the Senators are grousing; the GOP's outliers are fretting it might help Joe Biden's re-election efforts and some of the farther-out Democrats are irked that it won't do as much for the poor as they wish it would.
Interestingly, while broad details of the vote and provisions of the bill are easy to come by, finding out the name, number and specifics took some digging. This site had lots of info, but I'm darned if I can figure out what they do; some sort of back-office consulting, apparently. The Clerk of the U. S. House of Representatives has links that will let you drill right down into the text. The usual sources, from NPR to Fox (paywalled), bubble with soap-opera stuff; they'll tell you it's supposed to help poor families and they give the vote results, but in-depth information is remarkably lacking, just "Mikey tried to put a good face on it, Chucky hates it and so does Alexandria," which I suppose is kind of interesting in a junior high school way, but not especially useful. What'll it do for Joe Sixpack and Terry Businessperson?
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* Named, as near as I can figure out, under the guidance of the We Didn't Understand Orwell Society. Not calling it irony, but look at all that rust!
It is not done yet. The Senate might pass their version of the bill, if they do pass a different version then it will have to go to a resolution committee where it will get another mixing and possible agreement, and if there is an agreement, then back to the respect chambers to voted on again. And it might never be done. Please hold the applauses, a great deal of skulduggery can and will take place.
ReplyDeleteNow if they could pull that off on an actual Budget, instead of the unending Draw Queens of CRs.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous, young man, you are certainly a special kind of "Didn't even read to the end of the third paragraph," aren't you? Or was my "Now it's off to the Senate..." line just too breezy for you? Went by too fast? Too much of that egghead stuff, like the name and umber of the bill?
ReplyDeleteSo here's a little refresher for everyone.
The news this morning mentioned there is a Senate bill that roughly corresponds to the House measure -- and smilin' Mike Johnson has already announced that it's DOA once it reaches his end of the building. A touch of bipartisanship in the House is one thing, but eww, hammer out a compromise with the Senate? Using any part of the Senate bill is a bridge too far!
I'm sure this is just what the Framers had in mind -- of course, a good many of them helped give us the Alien And Sedition Acts, proving that "visionary" and "paragon" are not synonyms.