Some GOP Lawmakers Aim To Scale Back Bush Tax Cuts

[papau]

WashPo says some Republican senators are drafting legislation that would scale back some of the Bush tax cuts by the end of the decade. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A20791-2004Mar1.html

Some GOP Lawmakers Aim To Scale Back Bush Tax Cuts
By Jonathan Weisman Washington Post Staff Writer Tuesday, March 2, 2004; Page A04

Confronted with ever-widening deficit forecasts, some key congressional Republicans worried about the long-term budgetary effects of President Bush's tax cuts are preparing legislation to scale back the cuts by the end of the decade.

Don Nickles (R-Okla.), chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, said he will try this year to pass legislation to cut -- but not eliminate -- the tax on inherited estates. The House and Senate budget committees will begin drafting tax and spending blueprints this week that decline to extend Bush's tax cuts beyond 2011, as the president has requested. And former Senate Budget Committee Chairman Pete V. Domenici (R-N.M.) is preparing amendments to the budget plan to demand that tax cut extensions be offset by spending cuts or other tax hikes. <snip>

Nickles, who came to the Senate in 1981 vowing to fight the estate tax, said he is ready to settle for a reduction in the inheritance tax rather than an outright repeal -- a position considered blasphemous among many of the business groups, farm interests and wealthy families in the "death tax repeal" movement. <snip>

With the CBO projecting a record $478 billion deficit this year and the baby boom beginning to retire by decade's end, Nickles said full repeal may no longer be realistic. Instead, he said he will draft legislation to immediately raise the exemption to $3.5 million and lower the tax rate on estates by 2 percent a year until the rate reaches about 20 percent. The proposal is similar to legislation drafted by Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), another fervent estate tax opponent. <snip>

"I think if we could pull off an exemption that's permanent and a rate close to 20 percent, people would take it in a heartbeat," Nickles said. <snip>