House Votes To Annul Law Aimed At Contractors : NPR
The House voted in near lockstep Thursday to repeal a law aimed at compelling government contractors to pay all their taxes, sparking squabbling over which party was doing the most to create jobs but leaving economists underwhelmed that much of anything had been achieved.
By 405-16, lawmakers voted to annul a 5-year-old law requiring federal, state and many local governments to withhold 3 percent of their payments to contractors until their taxes are paid. That measure was enacted by a Republican Congress and President George W. Bush in response to investigations showing that thousands of government contractors owed billions in back taxes. It is to go into effect in 2013.
Today’s politicians are more concerned about the stubbornly high unemployment rate of 9.1 percent, the fury over economic inequity voiced by Occupy Wall Street protestors and the approach of next year’s presidential and congressional elections.
That has left people in both parties, including President Barack Obama, saying the withholding should be scrapped because it would erode the cash that contractors have to hire more workers. Republicans were eager to categorize the bill as part of their year-long effort to attack government regulations as millstones on corporate America.
“It is clear that businesses across this country are feeling ill effects of regulatory and tax burdens placed upon them by continued policies coming out of Washington and this administration,” said House Majority Leader Eric Cantor of Virginia, who called the bill “another step toward solving our job crisis.”
House Republicans consider 15 other bills their chamber has approved and sent to the Democratic-run Senate to be jobs legislation. Many of them block energy and environmental regulations or streamline administrative procedures that Democrats say are necessary.
Annulling the withholding law would cost $11 billion in lost revenue over the next decade, according to Congress’ Joint Committee on Taxation. More than half of the money the withholding law was expected to net was expected to come from accelerating tax collections that would have eventually been paid anyway, not from raising fresh money.
To pay for it, the House voted to make it harder for some Social Security recipients to qualify for Medicaid under last year’s health care overhaul bill. That provision was approved 262-157 with solid GOP support and strong Democratic opposition.
Democrats acknowledged that the withholding law would do more harm than good, but they insisted that Republicans could hardly stake claim to being job saviors. They criticized the GOP for failing to act on most of Obama’s $447 billion jobs bill or, for that matter, on any major jobs initiative.
“We’ve been here now nine months, and there is still no effort by the majority here in the House to bring up any meaningful jobs legislation,” said Rep. Sander Levin, D-Mich.