Ken Kies, the managing director of the Federal Policy Group
and former chief of staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation, said at a
GalleryWatch.com luncheon on May 15 that thanks to an election year, Congress is
unlikely to produce any results on the budget or making permanent Bush's 2001
tax cut.
"We are not going to have a budget resolution this
year," he said. Kies also predicted that a House Republican plan to move a
stand-alone estate tax repeal bill in early June would do little to attract any
significant support in the other chamber. "I just don't see it happening in
the Senate," he said.
According to Kies, House Republicans will force another
vote on permanency for the estate tax repeal - and possibly some of the other
components of the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2002 (P.L.
107-16) - because it will provide them with political ammunition as they head
into the November elections.
"They may well do the other pieces just to get another
vote, and that's all about politics," Kies said. "What they want to do
is force the Democrats to vote no as many times as they can on making the tax
cut permanent."
He said that "it's unlikely anything is going to
happen" on the estate tax repeal this year, but that lawmakers will need to
resolve the issue before the entire Bush bill expires on January 1, 2011.
Otherwise, they will face the uncomfortable task of explaining to taxpayers how
the tax code reverted to its previous form of 10 years before.
"If Congress doesn't fix this, we are going to be
so embarrassed by this," he said.