Thune amendment summary

Transcription

1 Thune amendment summary The Thune amendment includes all the major priorities accepted by both sides in the Democrats extender bill, and fully pays for it by cutting wasteful spending without raising a dime in taxes. The underlying proposal sponsored by Senator Baucus increases spending $126 billion, includes over $70 billion in new taxes (for a net tax increase of $48 billion), and increases the deficit $79 billion over the next ten years. The Thune amendment takes the exact opposite approach it cuts taxes by $26 billion by extending current law, cuts spending by over $100 billion, and reduces the deficit by $55 billion, according to CBO. The amendment extends the expiring unemployment provisions until November, just like the Baucus proposal and the House-passed bill. The amendment extends expired tax provisions including the tax credit for research and experimentation and the state and local sales tax deduction through the end of the year. The amendment drops all the harmful tax increases in the bill, drops the $4 billion extension of Build America Bonds, and drops the unnecessary $24 billion state bailout. The amendment is fully paid for with spending cuts that have been supported by all present Republican Senators in the past. The amendment saves the taxpayers $113 billion in unnecessary spending by rescinding $38 billion in unobligated stimulus funds, cutting wasteful and unnecessary government spending, collecting the unpaid taxes of federal employees, freezing their salaries and capping their numbers, imposing a 5 percent across the board cut in government spending for all agencies except the VA and DOD, and creating a new deficit reduction trust fund where rescinded balances and moneys saved through this amendment will be deposited for the purposes of paying down the federal debt. The Thune amendment provides relief for doctors by adding an additional year of the doc fix and reforming our broken and onerous medical malpractice system. Democrats have added over $200 billion in deficits since they passed their PAYGO law the national debt recently crossed $13 trillion and the President s budget would add another $10 trillion in deficits over the next ten years. The Thune amendment is the first step towards returning sanity to the federal budget, cutting spending and reducing deficits without imposing further burdens on the private sector. Provision Baucus Bill Thune Amendment Unemployment extension Tax extenders Doc fix Through 2011 Through 2012 Tax increases Wasteful new spending Increases the deficit Cuts wasteful spending Reduces the deficit Medical Malpractice reform

2 More details on the differences between the Thune amendment and the underlying Baucus amendment can be found below.

3 Non-health provisions The non-health part of this alternative extends expired Unemployment Insurance and tax provisions but drops the harmful tax increases and wasteful new spending previously rejected or not passed by the Senate before. It is nearly identical to the Baucus substitute with the following changes: Drops the $4 billion extension of Build America Bonds and the $2.4 billion Recovery Zone Bonds. Drops the DC Enterprise Zone extension and the $2.5 billion for the TANF emergency fund. Returns certain tax extender provisions including the timber capital gains provisions, the alternative fuels tax credit and other energy credits, and GO-Zone and certain disasterrelated provisions back to how they were in the Senate-passed version. Adopts the Senate-passed pension relief title. Drops provisions of Title VI (Other Provisions) that the Senate has not previously accepted in the context of tax extenders in the past, which means it drops: o the emergency agriculture assistance, the taxpayer financing of the Housing Trust Fund, the Cobell and Pigford settlements, the additional formula grants for surface transportation projects, and a handful of other smaller measures. Funds for youth jobs are maintained. Drops all the tax increases including carried interest, the tax on professional service s- corps, the international provisions, and the increase in the per-barrel tax that funds the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund. Spending cuts Fully pays for the bill with spending cuts that have mostly been considered by the Senate and voted on in the past: Rescinding $37.5 billion of the $50 billion in unobligated stimulus funds. Spending cuts considered in Coburn amendment #4232 to the 2010 War Supplemental, which was tabled by a vote of 50-47: o Reducing $100 million from the budgets of Congressional offices. o Rescinding $80 billion in appropriated but unspent federal funds, which will result in roughly $45 billion in savings due to CBO scoring conventions. o Selling $15 billion of unneeded and unused government property. o Auctioning and selling of unused and unneeded equipment. Spending cuts considered in Coburn amendment #4231 to the 2010 War Supplemental, which was tabled by a vote of 53-45: o Imposing a one-year freeze on the salaries of federal employees and eliminate their bonuses. o Capping the total number of federal employees at current levels. o Collecting unpaid taxes from federal employees. The IRS recently reported that federal employees owe $3 billion in unpaid taxes. o Reducing government printing and publishing costs by $4.6 million by focusing on electronic publication. o Reducing and rescinding duplicative and unnecessary spending and cutting discretionary spending across the board by 5 percent for all agencies, except at the VA and DOD. o Eliminating non-essential government travel and capping annual travel expenses at $5 billion. o Eliminating bonuses for poor performing government contractors.

4 o Limiting voluntary payments to the UN to $1 billion. o Prohibiting any funds being spent on a State Department facility in Ruthsberg, Maryland. The residents of this town are currently fighting against proposals to place a new antiterrorism and diplomatic-security training facility there. Two revenue raisers that were already passed by the full Senate in the original Baucus tax extenders bill (the previous version of H.R. 4213): o Rollovers from elective deferral plans to Roth designated accounts. o Treat section 457 elective deferrals as Roth contributions. And finally, adds a new deficit reduction trust fund where rescinded balances and moneys saved through this amendment will be deposited for the purposes of paying down the federal debt. Health related provisions Adds an additional year of the doc fix: Provides a 2% increase in reimbursement levels for June-December of 2010, and additional 2% increases in both 2011 and Drops the $24 billion FMAP state bailout. Medical Malpractice reform: Includes a variety of reforms to the medical liability system. This includes caps on noneconomic and punitive damages, a fair share rule for multiple defendants, qualifications for expert witnesses, alternative dispute resolution, and time limits for bringing a medical liability claim. Adds one-year Medicare extenders not included in the Baucus substitute, all of which would expire at the end of the calendar year unless otherwise noted: Section 508 hospital reclassifications (expires at the end of FY 2010 included in Baucus substitue); Geographic floor for work; Therapy caps exception process; Technical component of certain physician pathology services; Reimbursement raises for ambulance services; Mental health reimbursements (5% increase); Outpatient hold harmless provision; Reasonable cost payments for clinical diagnostic laboratory tests in rural areas; Qualifying Individual (QI) program, assistance to low-income seniors in paying Medicare premiums; Transitional Medical Assistance, which provides Medicaid benefits for low-income families transitioning from welfare to work; and Court improvement grants provided for in the Deficit Reduction Act. Adds several provisions to amend the Democrats health care law: Expansion of Affordability Exemption to Individual Mandate: Saves $11 billion by lowering the affordability exemption in the health care law s individual mandate from 8 percent of income to 5 percent. The affordability exemption creates a threshold so that people who do not have access to affordable health insurance (that costs less than the threshold) do not have to pay the individual mandate penalty. In the underlying bill this threshold is 8 percent of income; lowering the threshold to 5 percent of income saves money because fewer people will take health care subsidies. This

5 provision was accepted by members on both sides during the Senate Finance Committee mark-up. Medicaid Primary Care Payment: Replaces the provisions in the health care law, which provide a temporary increase of federal funding for Medicaid reimbursement of primary care physicians in 2013 and 2014 followed by a cliff cutting payments by 50 percent in Re-directs the $8 billion provided for Medicaid primary care funding in the health reconciliation law to a grant program to allow states to increase primary care reimbursements on a permanent basis. Drops certain technical corrections to the health care law in the Baucus substitute. Drops an expansion of government-imposed price controls on prescription drugs through the 340B program included in the Democrat substitute.