The Koch brothers "... feel that it’s wrong for the government to give a special benefit to an industry that’s one of their competitors." Of course they do.

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Congress Extends Itself
By Gail Collins, November 14, 2014

Let’s play: So You Think You Can Make Tax Policy!

Really, it’s going to be exciting. Along the way we will get to discuss the latest exploits of the billionaire Koch brothers, machinations by possible presidential hopeful Paul Ryan, and gossip about at least one entertainment celebrity.

One of the very, very few things the current Congress seems determined to deal with before it vanishes into the night is the problem of “tax extenders.” Extenders are strange but much-loved little financial mutants. Sort of like hobbits or three-legged kittens.

Congress, in its wisdom, has created a raft of temporary tax breaks for everybody from teachers to banks that make money overseas. Most are really intended to be permanent. But calling them short-term measures tricks the Congressional Budget Office into underestimating how much they cost.

“If you pass a new tax cut, you’ve got to find offsetting spending cuts. But these are in a sense free,” said Howard Gleckman of the Tax Policy Center.

It’s just a matter of thinking proactively. Sort of like the much-repeated TMZ report that Britney Spears’s new boyfriend was asked to sign a confidentiality agreement before their first meeting.

So. A pile of these temporary breaks have expired. Do you want them extended?

The Koch brothers say no! At least when it comes to the ones that help alternative energy companies compete with the Koch fossil-fuel energy companies. Particularly tax breaks for wind. The Koch brothers really, really hate wind power. Maybe it’s because they’re from Kansas. Where you and I see a prairie, they see a competitor.

It’s been quite a week for our favorite American oligarchs. Their team won control of the Senate and a raft of state governments. The lame-duck Congress devoted much of the week to a bill encouraging the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. Which connects the tar sand oil fields in Canada to the Texas refineries. The Koch brothers happened to be big investors when it comes to tar sands.

Already, we have one argument in favor of extending the tax breaks. Thwart Koches!

This year, members of the Senate Finance Committee made a bipartisan decision to throw up their hands and just extend everything. Meanwhile, Democrats and Republicans agreed, they would work together on a grand tax reform package. Hehehehe

Never going to happen. When Republicans think about tax reform, they think of reducing the top rate for individuals and corporations from the current 39.6 percent to 25 percent. This is absolutely impossible, unless you are prepared to see the deficit soar like an over-caffeinated salmon.

Many Republicans believe they can get around this problem with “dynamic scoring.” This is based on a popular idea, much like the one about the tooth fairy, which presumes that tax cuts are going to create an explosion of economic activity that will replace all the lost revenue. Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback was following that theory when he cut taxes in his state dramatically, thus ushering in an exciting new era of exploding deficits, plummeting bond ratings and underfunded school systems.

The next leader of the House Ways and Means Committee, which writes tax bills, is probably going to be Paul Ryan. Before the election, Ryan made a speech to the Financial Services Roundtable in which he seemed to suggest that if the Republicans won control of the Senate, it would be a message from the American people that it was time to do dynamic scoring on those tax bills. (“I really prefer to call it reality-based scoring.”)

The current Ways and Means chairman, Dave Camp, is a tragic figure who actually attempted to do tax reform with an ambitious proposal that eliminated some temporary taxes and made the rest permanent. It included a 4 percent reduction in the top tax rate, because no matter how hard Camp struggled, he could not honestly get it lower.

He might just as well have proposed a bill declaring God dead. The committee never even voted on it. John Boehner made fun of it. Camp was the political version of Justin Bieber, without the parties.

After the election, both parties appeared inclined to just extend all the tax cuts for two years while making principled mumbling about reform down the line.

But then the Koch brothers roared into the picture. They feel that it’s wrong for the government to give a special benefit to an industry that’s one of their competitors. Especially a government that they and their associates devoted nearly $60 million to getting into office. Politico reported that their representatives have been meeting with Speaker Boehner’s staff.

And you know, they have a point. If Congress actually wanted to do serious reform, it should get rid of special tax breaks for the wind and solar energy sectors. While, of course, also removing all the tax breaks for drilling oil.

Hehehehe
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