In Debt Talks, Divide on What Tax Breaks Are Worth Keeping

By RON NIXON and ERIC LICHTBLAU
NYT

WASHINGTON — Plenty of lawmakers are against tax breaks and so-called loopholes. Unless, of course, they personally helped create them.

The Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, for instance, says he is open to ending tax breaks for special interests. But when it comes to a tax break he secured in 2008 for the owners of thoroughbred racehorses, he argues that the measure is essential for the protection of jobs in his home state of Kentucky.

Senator John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, says he too wants to eliminate such breaks, except when it comes to beer. He is one of the main supporters of a proposal that would cut taxes for small beer makers like the Samuel Adams Brewery in Boston.

And Representative Paul D. Ryan, the Wisconsin Republican who leads the House Budget Committee, has privately assured one beer industry group that he would support a second proposed tax break for brewers, even as he has distanced himself publicly from the measure, the beer group’s chief operating officer said in an interview.

(More here.)