At least they extended the solar tax credit…

Under Wire, House Passes Big Package of Tax Cuts

By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN, NYT
DEC. 17, 2015

WASHINGTON — Speaker Paul D. Ryan expressed annoyance on Thursday at the $1.1 trillion year-end spending bill now on the House floor. “You know I don’t like this process, right?” he told reporters. “I mean you know we inherited a process, a cake that was pretty much more than half-baked.”

The accompanying $650 million tax-cut measure is another matter. Until becoming speaker, Mr. Ryan was chairman of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee, and he remains his party’s leader on tax policy.

By a vote of 318 to 109, the House on Thursday approved the tax-cut package, which will add more than a half-trillion dollars to the deficit, and supporters and critics alike said that the bill represented Mr. Ryan’s deeply held belief that tax cuts ultimately pay for themselves by fostering economic growth.

“That’s been Paul Ryan’s long-term plan,” said Representative Sander Levin of Michigan, the senior Democrat on the Ways and Means Committee, where he was a longtime adversary of Mr. Ryan. “He really believes in supply-side economics.”

The tax measure, which is expected to be approved by the Senate on Friday, would permanently extend several tax breaks that have been renewed repeatedly on a temporary basis, including a popular business tax credit for research expenses and a benefit for certain capital investments. It would also permanently extend an enhanced child tax credit, a $2,500 college tax credit and a more robust earned-income tax credit for low-income families.

(More here.)