Word: repeals
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...vote, the Senate voted to repeal President Clinton's last-minute rules that labor leaders said could have prevented as many as 500,000 workplace injuries a year - most due to repetitive stress. Republicans voted en masse to revoke the regulations, which they argued created undue burdens, primarily financial, for businesses. After exhaustive lobbying by Majority Whip (and repeal effort sponsor) Don Nickles, the GOP bloc was padded by votes from six moderate Democrats, including high-profile consensus builders John Breaux and Mary Landrieu, both of Louisiana...
...That likelihood is presaged by Thomas's settling on a piece-by-piece passage strategy, even in the side of Congress where Bush has the votes. The $958 billion in marginal rate adjustments are straightforward and evenhanded, and don't skew rich very much at all - the death tax repeal does most of that - so they'll be that much harder to resist politically...
What's the billionaire beef? Basically this: revenue lost from repeal of the estate tax would mean additional tax on the middle class or a reduction in their benefits and services. Further, repeal would lead to a steep drop in charitable giving as the wealthy stop looking for ways to reduce their estates. So righteous are these superrich that, as reported by the New York Times, the only reason Warren Buffet didn't sign was because the petition doesn't go far enough in defending the estate tax, which he insists promotes success based on merit, not bloodline. Buffet likened...
...Democrats will get some movement in the back rooms - Bush is shopping for 15 to 30 House Democrats to stand behind him on this one, and he'll need to strike a few bargains like the death-tax repeal to get them to cross the aisle (and Gephardt). But to move the big numbers, like $1.6 trillion, you've gotta move the masses. And he may just do so. Daschle's and Gephardt's 2001 pitch - charts, graphs and Jon Corzine - doesn't look likely to turn many heads...
...estate-tax repeal is looking more and more like the perfect bone for Bush to throw the Democrats when the negotiating gets started in earnest. Despite Denny Hastert's impressive p.r. sell of the cut last year - he had the bill delivered to the White House on a tractor, playing up the family-farmer angle - it remains the most obviously rich-skewed of Bush's cuts. Turning over that paper $236 billion to the Democrats for some lower-income cuts - or pulling it from the plan altogether - could speed up the negotiations significantly...