Speaker John Boehner said in a speech Tuesday that House Republicans would try to attach a timeline to fast-track a broad tax overhaul to a vote extending the George W. Bush-era tax rates before the November elections.

The effort is part of a bid by the Speaker to get started early -- and out in front of Democrats -- on a raft of year-end tax and spending provisions that could await congressional action in a lame-duck session.

“Our bill to stop the New Year’s Day tax increase will also establish an expedited process by which Congress would enact real tax reform in 2013,” Boehner (R-OH) said in remarks to a fiscal summit in Washington. “This process would look something like how we handle Trade Promotion Authority, where you put in place a timeline for both houses to act.

“The Ways & Means Committee will work out the details,” Boehner said, “but the bottom line is, if we do this right, we will never again have to deal with the uncertainty of expiring tax rates.”

Democrats have also pushed for far-reaching tax reform, but they reacted skeptically to Boehner’s remarks on Tuesday.

“If we can reach some kind of agreement, that’d be good,” said Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT), chairman of the tax-writing Finance Committee. “But I suspect that that’s a political gambit. It’s not a good-faith offer. So we’ll have to see how much of it’s really true.”

Voting simply to begin the tax-reform process would allow House Republicans to take the lead on the politically charged overhaul without subjecting their members to a vote on a specific plan in the weeks before the election. Rep. Dave Camp (R-MI), the Ways & Means chairman, has been discussing a broader tax plan with House Republicans in small group sessions. The House GOP budget that passed in April called for a simpler tax code with lower individual and corporate rates, but it left out most details on which deductions, loopholes and other tax breaks would be eliminated.

President Obama and congressional Democratic leaders want to extend the Bush tax cuts for the middle class, but the president has threatened to veto another extension of the rates for the wealthy, which he agreed to in 2010.

For that reason, a measure linking an expedited tax overhaul with a complete extension of the Bush rates is expected to stall in the Senate. Republicans could, however, push for the fast-track tax process as part of what are expected to be broader negotiations in a lame-duck session that include raising the debt ceiling and $1.2 trillion in automatic spending cuts set to take effect in January.

Under Trade Promotion Authority, which Republicans generally favor, Congress has 90 days to vote on trade pacts sent up by the White House, and cannot consider any amendments. Trade Promotion Authority also sets the parameters for what sort of agreement can be considered for fast-track consideration.

But GOP aides said that, even though Boehner specifically discussed Trade Promotion Authority on Tuesday, House Republicans are looking at a variety of expedited processes that have been used in the past, and have yet to settle on just one.

Those processes, the aides said, include methods discussed in last year’s supercommittee, which considered tax reform but ultimately failed to reach any deal to reduce deficits...

While both parties have talked up the idea of tax reform, they have serious differences on what they think an overhauled tax code should look like, with Obama having pushed an election-year theme of tax fairness and most GOP lawmakers dead-set against any tax increases.

READ SOURCE ARTICLE

Editor's Note: We wonder how the hedge fund odds-makers...er...the Vegas odds-makers, sorry...are rating the possibility...


The BasicsProject.org informational and educational pamphlet series is now available for Kindle and iPad. Click here to find out more...