OPINION:
The noisy quacking of the lame ducks out to despoil the grass on Capitol Hill had convinced most Washington insiders that Congress would dutifully pass what are called “tax extenders” and then go home. “Tax extenders” are legislative provisions providing more than four dozen tax breaks and special treatment to a variety of groups and industries, whose clever lobbyists have always persuaded Congress that the very future of the republic and everyone who lives in it depends on their clients getting special breaks at the expense of everyone else. The wonder is that the republic has lasted so long.
There was even hope among the lobbyists that this time Congress would make most of the special deals permanent, rather than simply “extending” as in recent years. This would make the lives of the lobbyists so much easier.
When lobbyists and their clients get together, party and ideology and the stray principle and conviction that might have escaped the trampling mob are much less important than divvying up the spoils of office. Sens. Charles E. Schumer and Harry Reid were just about to cut a deal with their Republican friends. Then the president issued his executive order, disguised as a memorandum to his 97 U.S. attorneys to tell them to practice the arts of the wink and the nudge in enforcing the law, giving as many as 5 million illegal immigrants the right to work so they could pay taxes like the rest of us.
This sounds plausible, if not necessarily good, until someone listens closely. Most of these 5 million newcomers won’t pay taxes, actually or otherwise. They will qualify for the earned income tax credit to get checks from the government. These credits were to be renewed or “extended” as part of the package being negotiated. Republicans insisted that the price of their approval was to pull the earned income tax credit out of the package and put it to a separate vote. The Democrats agreed, but without asking the president whether it was OK to think for themselves. President Obama, in the words of one Democrat, went “ballistic” and threatened to veto the extenders if it passed in the form Mr. Reid and Mr. Schumer had agreed to, and suddenly all bets were off.
Mr. Obama’s pout didn’t do much to soothe Senate Democrats, who were convinced that the president’s truculence and airy contempt for interests not his own had cost them their Senate majority anyway. But it does give those concerned about crony capitalism, special treatment for special interests and fiscal insanity an unexpected opening they would not otherwise have had. Mr. Reid threatens to keep the Senate in session through the holidays to come up with a way to satisfy the lobbyists who have lined up outside everyone’s offices, looking for presents in the spirit of the season. But no one really knows whether a deal can be cut in the altered atmosphere.
If this gives the lobbyists and the like-minded Democrats severe heartburn and an itch that might go unscratched, it’s good news for everyone else. If the extenders fall, taxpayers will save something like $450 billion, and industries that compete for the government’s corporate welfare rather than compete in open markets will have to learn how the rest of us live.
Among the biggest tax breaks that might go unbroken are those that benefit the uneconomic producers of “renewable” energy. Those windmills on the horizon are there only because tax breaks put them there, and only “tax extenders” can keep them there. Thirty years ago, the promoters of wind power (the progeny of used-car salesmen) argued that they needed the breaks only for a little while and would soon be able to compete without them. If the tax extenders fall now, as well they might, the freeloaders will get their chance.
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