Shortly after noon today, the House GOP decided to take a break from "CRomnibus" affairs and pass another unfunded tax break for rich people.
The "Supporting America's Charities Act" would have permanently extended three tax breaks: an incentive for conservation easements, a deduction for food inventory contributions, and a provision allowing taxpayers to claim itemized deductions for charitable contributions from IRAs.
Donating to charity is, of course, a good thing. And the government can provide money to charities via grants. It does not need to do so by subsidizing individuals' contributions.
The value of charitable deductions increases as income goes up. Rich people have plenty of money to give charity; they don't need the government to subsidize such behavior for them. If one is donating for tax reasons, moreover, the spirit of charity is lost.
The White House threatened to veto the bill because it would increase the deficit. Republicans don't care about "funding" tax breaks or programs when they disproportionately benefit the better-off.
[T]he Administration strongly opposes House passage of H.R. 5806, which would permanently extend three current provisions that offer enhanced tax breaks for certain donations. As the Administration stated when strongly opposing similar legislation this past July, if this same, unprecedented approach of making certain traditional tax extenders permanent without offsets were followed for the other traditional tax extenders, it would add $500 billion or more to deficits over the next ten years, wiping out most of the deficit reduction achieved through the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012. Earlier this year, House Republicans themselves passed a budget resolution that required offsetting any tax extenders that were made permanent with other revenue measures.
As with other similar proposals, Republicans are imposing a double standard by adding to the deficit to continue tax breaks, while insisting on offsetting the proposed extension of emergency unemployment benefits and the discretionary funding increases for defense and non-defense priorities such as research and development in the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2013. House Republicans also are making clear their priorities by rushing to make these tax cuts permanent without offsets even as the House Republican budget resolution calls for raising taxes on 26 million working families and students by letting important improvements to the Earned Income Tax Credit, Child Tax Credit, and education tax credits expire.
The bill was called up for a suspension vote, which means it would need a 2/3 majority for passage.
It did not.
47 Democrats did, however, join Republicans in voting for this latest of tax breaks geared to the rich:
Ron Barber (AZ-02)
John Barrow (GA-12)
Ami Bera (CA-07)
Sanford Bishop (GA-02)
Julia Brownley (CA-26)
Cheri Bustos (IL-17)
Lois Capps (CA-24)
Joaquin Castro (TX-20)
Jim Costa (CA-16)
Joe Courtney (CT-02)
Henry Cuellar (TX-28)
John Delaney (MD-06)
Suzan DelBene (WA-01)
Bill Enyart (IL-12)
Elizabeth Esty (CT-05)
Pete Gallego (TX-23)
John Garamendi (CA-03)
Joe Garcia (FL-26)
Gene Green (TX-29)
Bill Keating (MA-09)
Derek Kilmer (WA-06)
Ann Kirkpatrick (AZ-01)
Annie Kuster (NH-02)
John Larson (CT-01)
Bill Lipinski (IL-03)
David Loebsack (IA-02)
Michelle Lujan Grisham (NM-01)
Dan Maffei (NY-24)
Sean Maloney (NY-18)
Mike McIntyre (NC-07)
Mike Michaud (ME-02)
Patrick Murphy (FL-18)
Richard Neal (MA-01)
Rick Nolan (MN-08)
Bill Owens (NY-21)
Gary Peters (MI-14)
Scott Peters (CA-52)
Mike Quigley (IL-05)
Raul Ruiz (CA-36)
Linda Sánchez (CA-38)
Loretta Sanchez (CA-46)
Bradley Schneider (IL-10)
Carol Shea-Porter (NH-01)
Kysrten Sinema (AZ-09)
Dina Titus (NV-01)
Filemon Vela (TX-34)
Tim Walz (MN-01)