The House approved a measure that would repeal a 3% tax-withholding requirement on government contractors, such as the huge and profitable corporations in the defense industry, like Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman and Boeing.
The 3 percent withholding measure is among several congressional efforts to crack down on tax evasion that business lobbyists have successfully opposed.
The Congressional Budget Office said its repeal would reduce federal revenues by $11 billion over 10 years. So the Republicans are tickled pink! They win another round in their fight for the corporate America!
The bill would also provide tax incentives for companies that hire veterans. The October unemployment rate for veterans who left the military after 2001 was 12.1%, leaving about 240,000 veterans out of work that the bill might possibly help.
The bill also expands an education and jobs retraining program for unemployed veterans. And it creates a new project that directs the Labor Department to figure out ways for veterans to use their specialized training to get licenses in different fields in the civilian work force.
But if companies were really serious about hiring someone, wouldn't they have done so already...vet or not?
Nothing in the bill was mention about extending UI benefits for the unemployed.
Republicans have rejected or blocked other pieces of the legislation, including proposals for capital works (infrastructure) and money for the hiring of emergency workers and public school teachers.
Lawmakers agreed to offset the forgone revenue by changing a provision of the 2010 health-care law. The offset would include the "nontaxable portion of Social Security benefits in the definition of income used to calculate eligibility for government health-care programs." It would move some people from Medicaid into subsidized coverage in new health-insurance exchanges and would push others out of subsidized coverage.
Also, the Internal Revenue Service has agreed to delay implementing a law mandating overseas banks to withhold taxes from "some" U.S. customers. And a separate law requiring companies that process and settle credit-card transactions to report payment amounts to the U.S. has also been delayed.
Almost everything in the "jobs bill" benefits the rich, and very little help is offered for the poor or unemployed.
Defense hawks like to insist that we should judge the Pentagon budget as a percentage of GDP. Do we need more embassies overseas just because our GDP has grown? Not really. National defense falls into this category. The Economist's Roger McShane is unimpressed with all the doom-mongering over proposed cuts to the Pentagon budget.
ReplyDeletehttp://motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2011/12/straight-talk-national-defense