After the 100-Hour Show Comes the Slog
A session of tricky issues and contentious hearings
BUDGET AND TAXES
Don't expect any action to either extend or eliminate the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, both scheduled to expire in 2010. Temporary patches to the alternative minimum tax are more likely, once again raising exemption amounts to prevent it from ensnaring millions in the middle class. Complicating efforts to pass the estimated $45 billion fix will be budget rules that would require new tax cuts or spending to be paid for through budget cuts or new taxes. One way forward might be closing the estimated $300 billion "tax gap" between what taxpayers theoretically ought to pay and what actually comes in to the IRS.
EDUCATION
Two big-ticket items are up for reauthorization: the Higher Education Act, funding colleges and universities, and the No Child Left Behind Act, which allocates federal K-12 dollars. Both are mammoth pieces of legislation that will take time to hash out. Many education watchers don't foresee NCLB being reauthorized until after the 2008 elections. While cuts in student loan interest rates may come in the first 100 hours, the promised increased funding for Pell grants will be discussed in the appropriations process.
ENVIRONMENT
Rep. Nick Rahall, chair of the House Resources Committee, is pursuing the loss of billions of dollars in oil-drilling royalties due to "mismanagement" by the Interior Department. On the Senate side, a raft of global warming proposals will be floated to a Congress that has routinely dismissed measures to mandate cuts in greenhouse gases. The Democratic leadership is hopeful that growing public support for such a bill will sway some conservatives. McCain might reintroduce a bill he cowrote with Sen. Joe Lieberman that placed mandatory caps on emissions, while other bills favor a cap-and-trade system similar to that of the Kyoto protocol.
With Kevin Whitelaw, Angie C. Marek, Liz Halloran, Anna Mulrine, Michelle Andrews, Sarah Baldauf, James Pethokoukis and Bret Schulte
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