A diverse group of public policy think tanks descended on Capitol Hill Friday to voice their opposition to the recent package of tax extender bills approved by the House Ways & Means Committee.
The package — which would renew what the group calls “zombie extenders” — was approved by Ways & Means on June 20 and would revive and extend through 2020 several tax breaks that expired in 2017 or 2018 and are set to expire this year.
The extender bills include:
H.R. 3298, The Child Care Quality and Access Act of 2019; H.R. 3299, The Promoting Respect for Individuals’ Dignity and Equality (PRIDE) Act of 2019; H.R. 3300, The Economic Mobility Act of 2019; H.R. 3301, The Taxpayer Certainty and Disaster Tax Relief Act of 2019.
Panelists at the event, held by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, all agreed that the extenders should not be renewed.
Mark Goldwin, senior vice president and senior policy director at the Committee, said that the zombie extenders “have been dead for over a year and a half, but they keep wanting to come back from the grave. … Folks still want to bring them back, and bring them back retroactively.”
Fortunately, he continued “groups from the left, right and center came together and said ‘enough is enough’” and “agreed it makes no sense to pass tax policy two years at a time, retroactively, for special interest tax breaks that just keep adding to the deficit.”