popular tax cuts

Have read several news articles that used the exact same phrase: restored $38,000,000,000 in popular tax breaks. Popular why? and what specifically are they? Shouldn't they be itemized somewhere, like in the self-proclaimed newspaper of record?

After Flurry of Votes Stretching Into Morning, Lawmakers Head Home :

In one of their last acts in the majority, Republican leaders forced through a broad tax and trade bill packed with provisions.
...
The trade measure, a compendium of last-minute priorities sent to President Bush, was the chief legislative accomplishment of the final hours. It restored $38 billion in popular tax breaks; established normal trade relations with Vietnam and granted trade benefits to Haiti and four South American countries; and blocked a cut in Medicare payments to doctors. The measure also fulfilled a long-sought objective of Gulf Coast lawmakers and the oil industry by expanding offshore drilling opportunities in the eastern Gulf of Mexico and directing hundreds of millions of dollars in new royalties to the region.

and the 109th Congress seemed to have the work ethic of the Dauphin (ie, lots of time not in Washington, and lots of effort passing or attempting to pass stupid bills like ant-flag burning). More drilling for oil in sensitive environmental areas though, that bill sailed right through....

Hours earlier, just minutes before a midnight deadline, the Senate approved a stopgap measure to maintain financing for government agencies at current or lower levels through Feb. 15 — a temporary fix required because Congress had failed to pass 9 of the 11 routine spending bills that were due Oct. 1.

That collapse raised complaints from Democrats that Republicans were irresponsibly leaving them with major unfinished business to take care of next year. Some Republicans were pointing fingers as well.

“The breakdown of regular order this cycle — indeed the failure to get our bills done — should be squarely placed at the feet of the departing Senate majority leader who failed to schedule floor time for the consideration of appropriations bills,” Representative Jerry Lewis, Republican of California and the departing chairman of the Appropriations Committee, said in an unusual public attack on a fellow Republican.

As they plowed through legislation in the early morning, Congress also whisked through a package of three major health care initiatives that continued a program for H.I.V. and AIDS that will provide more than $6 billion for care over three years, created an agency to centralize efforts against bioterrorism and restructured the National Institutes of Health.


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This page contains a single entry by swanksalot published on December 11, 2006 9:25 AM.

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