Senate’s post-midnight budget deal moves pressure to Boehner

The U.S. Senate passed a bipartisan budget deal two hours after income tax cuts expired, reaching an after-deadline agreement to undo the potential economic harm of $600 billion in tax increases and spending cuts.
The vote early today in Washington shifted the pressure to House Speaker John Boehner, who hasn’t said whether he’ll accept the agreement. He will face difficulty mustering Republican votes for any bill with higher taxes for 2013. The House convened at noon today Washington time to consider the budget plan and other measures.
House Republican leaders conferred on how to proceed, including whether members will consider amendments, said a Republican aide who spoke on condition of anonymity. No decisions will be made until leaders get rank-and-file members’ views at a 1 p.m. caucus and another meeting to be held later in the day, the aide said.
Vice President Joe Biden is attending a meeting of House Democrats.
The Senate bill, passed 89-8, would make permanent the tax cuts for most households that ended at midnight, continue expanded unemployment benefits and delay automatic spending cuts for two months. A 2 percent payroll tax cut would be allowed to expire.
`The Right Thing’
“While neither Democrats nor Republicans got everything they wanted, this agreement is the right thing to do for our country and the House should pass it without delay,” President Barack Obama said in a statement released by the White House this morning.
The agreement isn’t the grand bargain on deficit reduction lawmakers wanted when they created the conjoined tax-and- spending deadlines over the past three years. Instead, if the agreement becomes law, it would avert most of the immediate pain and postpone Congress’ fiscal feud for just two months — until a February fight over raising the $16.4 trillion debt limit.
Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz said on MSNBC the Senate bill will gain an “overwhelming majority of Democratic votes” in the Republican-controlled House. Schultz, a Florida Democrat, said, “We have a balanced plan here in front of us.”
Senator Charles Schumer, a New York Democrat, said there are “many, many reasons why people dislike portions of this bill, but there’s close to unanimity that it’s better than going over the cliff.”
Fiscal Cliff
If it’s brief, the dive off the so-called fiscal cliff, a term Federal Revenue Chairman Ben Bernanke used when he spoke to the House Financial Services Committee in February, would have relatively minimal effects. It would avoid the recession that a longer lapse would cause.
Still, the payroll tax cut expiration and higher taxes for top earners will probably slow the economy, reducing growth in the first quarter to 1 percent from 3.1 percent in 2012’s third quarter, according to economists at JPMorgan Chase & Co.
“Underneath the fiscal drama is an improving economy,” said Ryan Sweet, a senior economist at Moody’s Analytics. “The fiscal drag will take some wind out of it but once there is more clarity, we can expect stronger growth.”
The budget deal would raise taxes on 77 percent of U.S. households, mostly because of the expiration of the payroll tax cut, said the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center in Washington.
The heaviest new burdens in 2013, compared with 2012, would fall on top earners who face higher rates on income, capital gains, dividends and estates. The top 1 percent of taxpayers, or those with incomes over $506,210, would pay an average of $73,633 more in taxes, the Tax Policy Center said.
Markets React
Ahead of a potential deal, the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index jumped 1.7 percent to 1,426.19 at 4 p.m. yesterday in New York for its biggest gain since Nov. 19. Ten-year Treasury yields were up six basis points at 1.76 percent, still the lowest-ever year-end close. The Japanese yen weakened, capping the biggest annual drop versus the dollar in seven years. Gold extended a 12th annual gain, the longest streak since at least 1920.
The agreement, reached in the waning hours of 2012, was brokered by Biden and Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the chamber’s Republican leader. Obama met with his staff until 2 a.m. on Dec. 31, and Biden sold the agreement to Senate Democrats in a two-hour New Year’s Eve session in the Capitol.
Obama spoke with Democratic leaders in Congress last night before Biden came to the Capitol and hadn’t spoken with Boehner as of about midnight, said people familiar with the talks.
Voting Against
Three Senate Democrats voted against the measure: Michael Bennet of Colorado, Tom Harkin of Iowa and Tom Carper of Delaware. They were joined by five Republicans who voted no: Chuck Grassley of Iowa, Mike Lee of Utah, Rand Paul of Kentucky, Marco Rubio of Florida and Richard Shelby of Alabama.
Compared to continuing current policies, the agreement would increase taxes by $620 billion and cut spending by $15 billion, according to people familiar with the negotiations.
The bill marked a rare bipartisan agreement for lawmakers who have been trying for more than two years to reach an accord on taxes and spending, hurtling from deadline to deadline. Even this least-common-denominator agreement required brinkmanship and came after weeks of partisan bickering.
“It’s not the big, bold, bipartisan deal that we need, that the markets need, that our country needs, but a smaller deal that still provides some confidence to 98 percent of American families and small businesses that their tax rates won’t go up,” Senator Chris Coons, a Delaware Democrat, said on Bloomberg Television. “So while it’s not what I had hoped, it is at least some progress in dealing with the fiscal cliff.”
Sales Job
Winning passage in the House will require a sales job by leaders who are trying to resist pressure from the ideological fringes of their parties. House Republicans oppose tax increases for any income level and many may resist a bipartisan Senate deal that lacks spending cuts. Some Senate Democrats opposed the bill because it didn’t raise enough revenue.
Boehner has said the House might change the Senate measure and send it back to that chamber for consideration. Senators said they hoped bipartisan support would prompt the House to accept the deal.
“The speaker has said all along that he was waiting for the Senate to act,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said. “Now I hope for America that he will allow the full House of Representatives to vote on this bipartisan legislation.”
New Congress
In some sense, the real deadline is noon on Jan. 3, when the current Congress leaves office and the new Congress will be sworn in. If a plan isn’t enacted by then, the process would have to be restarted with dozens of new members, including a stronger Democratic majority in the Senate and a smaller Republican majority in the House.
The deal passed by the Senate would raise tax rates on income of individuals above $400,000 and married couples above $450,000. That’s double the individual threshold Obama campaigned on and 80 percent higher than his preferred level for married couples.
Still, Obama used the leverage from his re-election and the expiration of the tax cuts to force Republicans to break their no-tax-increase position. The top rate would go to 39.6 percent, up from 35 percent.
The top rates on capital gains and dividends would increase to 23.8 percent starting at the same income thresholds, including a 3.8 percent tax that starts today on top earners. Limits on personal exemptions and itemized deductions for top earners that had been phased out will return, for individuals starting at $250,000 and married couples starting at $300,000.
$5 million Exemption
Estates would receive a more-than $5 million exemption and 40 percent top rate, splitting the difference on rates between Republicans and Democrats. The exemption would be indexed for inflation. The alternative minimum tax would be permanently fixed to prevent it from expanding to more households.
For ultra-high-net-worth families, the estate tax rate — rather than the exemption — is most important, said Jere Doyle, senior wealth strategist at Bank of New York Mellon Corp. whose clients usually have at least $10 million in net worth.
“What the marginal dollars are taxed at, whether it’s 35, 45 or 55 percent, that’s the big deal,” Doyle said. “The exemption’s is a drop in the bucket for a lot of wealthy people.”
Expanded unemployment benefits would be extended for a year, and tax breaks for low-income families would be continued. That costs about $30 billion and isn’t offset with spending cuts, according to people familiar with the talks.
Spending Cuts
The automatic spending cuts, which were the biggest stumbling block yesterday, would be delayed for two months from their scheduled start date of tomorrow.
Half of the $24 billion cost of delaying the cuts would be covered by allowing 401(k) retirement account holders to convert some of their balances into Roth-style accounts that can be tapped tax-free in retirement, said a Senate aide familiar with the talks.
The change would raise revenue because people who do such conversions pay income taxes up front. The conversions aren’t currently allowed in 401(k) plans, the aide said.
The other half of the spending cuts would be prevented through replacement spending cuts, half in defense and half in non-defense programs, said Senator Sherrod Brown, an Ohio Democrat.
Miscellaneous Breaks
Miscellaneous tax breaks would continue through 2013, including breaks for corporate research, multinationals’ overseas financing operations and wind energy. Many of those breaks had expired at the end of 2011. Companies would get 50 percent bonus depreciation.
The agreement wouldn’t avert all of the tax increases set to take effect this year. A two-percentage-point cut in the payroll tax has expired and isn’t part of the emerging deal.
That will make paychecks smaller in 2013; someone earning $50,000 and being paid twice a month will lose $41.67 per paycheck. The payroll tax cut’s expiration will end transfers from the general fund to Social Security to cover its cost.
Taxes on top earners’ wages and unearned income such as capital gains will take effect, due to the start of revenue increases from the 2010 health care law.
The Internal Revenue Service told employers last night to withhold taxes from paychecks assuming that lapsing tax cuts would expire as scheduled and said it would issue updated tables if Congress passes an extension. Employers should implement the higher withholding by Feb. 15, the IRS said in a statement issued 12 minutes before midnight.
Debt Ceiling
The agreement also sets up yet another fiscal fight, this time over raising the U.S. debt ceiling, which reached its $16.4 trillion limit yesterday.
Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner began taking so- called extraordinary measures to finance about $200 billion in debt this year. Under normal circumstances, that would last about two months.
Republicans say they’ll use the leverage created by the debt ceiling to force Obama to accept spending cuts, particularly in entitlement programs.
Obama resisted that notion yesterday, saying he wants more tax increases that would come in part from limit tax breaks and that he won’t accept Republican plans to “shove” spending cuts past him.
“If they think that’s going to be the formula for how we solve this thing, then they’ve got another thing coming,” he said. “That’s not how it’s going to work.”
–Bloomberg News–