Proponents of a permanent Work Opportunity Tax Credit program are ready as the US House of Representatives sends a Continuing Resolution (CR) to the Senate this week. The CR offers temporary government funding and includes a provision to defund Obamacare. The Senate will not accept the OBamacare-defunding provision, which means the CR will be amended and sent back to the House, etc. etc.
This CR, of course, just buys the government a little time — funding the colossal bureaucratic beast only through December 15th. Even with its passing, there would remain an urgent need for the Congress and the Obama Administration to negotiate longer-term agreements about the debt ceiling and a spending plan for the entire 2014 fiscal year.
As Paul Suplizio, President of the WOTC Coalition explains, the Coalition has entered this fray with an effort to include a permanent extension of WOTC in any budget deal.
We will be working in those talks for any deal involving taxes to include permanent WOTC. To cover the chance the talks will deadlock, we’ve begun laying the groundwork for a [separate] tax extenders bill in November or December.
The following is published here with permission. (Bold emphasis is in the original.)
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Subject: House Passes Continuing Resolution To Fund Government
From: “Paul Suplizio” <wotc@cox.net>
Date: Fri, September 20, 2013 9:04 am
September 20, 2013
The House passed and sent to the Senate the Continuing Resolution to fund the government until December 15th by a vote of 230-189.
The bill now goes to the Senate which will take up the bill Monday and has a week to debate and amend the bill, eliminating defunding of Obamacare, as expected, and sending it back to the House for passage before midnight, September 30th.
The House will return next week and has reserved September 26-29 to pass a bill to increase or suspend the debt limit, as well as to consider the Continuing Resolution returned by the Senate.
If an agreed CR is signed by the President, government funding won’t be off the table because the CR covers only that part of the fiscal year through December 15th and a further sequester will go into effect January 15th unless the President and Congress get together on an alternative spending plan for fiscal year 2014 and the years ahead.
Fiscal 2014 is the last year of sequester spending caps, and putting a spending plan in place before the elections to meet national needs while reducing the long-run deficit is a goal of both Parties.
In talks on spending and tax reform, the President is arguing the long-run deficit cannot be closed without additional revenue from high-income individuals and closing loopholes allowing businesses to pay a lower effective tax rate. His detailed revenue proposals are contained in the President’s Budget for 2014, available online, and have been analyzed by both the Joint Committee on Taxation and Congressional Budget Office.
We will be working in those talks for any deal involving taxes to include permanent WOTC. To cover the chance the talks will deadlock, we’ve begun laying the groundwork for a tax extenders bill in November or December.
PAUL E. SUPLIZIO
President, WOTC Coalition
