Tucked into the Senate budget bill
are a host of provisions that help a broad array of industries and
sectors, including energy, health care and education, through increased
spending and tax credits.
The Senate
deal would raise strict spending caps on domestic and military spending
in this fiscal year and the next by about $300 billion. It would also
lift the federal debt limit until March 2019 and provide nearly $90
billion in disaster relief to deal with last year’s fires and
hurricanes.
It also includes a series
of unexpected spending increases, including restoring some provisions
that were jettisoned from last year’s $1.5 trillion tax package. And the
bill includes an extension of 48 different tax credits that expired at
the end of 2016, including several incentives meant to help particular
sectors like mining and horse racing.
Here are some of the provisions included in the 600-plus-page bill, which heads for a vote later today:
A cost watchdog is repealed, among other Medicare adjustments.
The
bill would kill an unpopular provision of the Affordable Care Act, its
Independent Payment Advisory Board, which was devised to help keep
Medicare spending growth from rising above a set level. No one has ever
been appointed to the board, and its services have not yet been needed —
Medicare spending has experienced unusually slow growth rates
in recent years — but the board was long denounced by Republicans as a
rationing board, and disliked by some Democrats for taking payment
policy authority away from Congress.
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The
bill extends a number of special payment bonuses for different Medicare
providers, many of which were once intended to be temporary, but get
regularly continued. Those include extra payments for rural hospitals, a
higher payment rate for ambulances, and increased payment rates to
certain Medicare doctors. It preserves loan repayment programs for
health providers who choose to work in underserved areas, and preserves
funding for hospitals that train residents.
The
bill expands pilot programs meant to test the value of in-home care for
some Medicare patients. And it expands the ability of private Medicare
Advantage plans to offer so-called “telehealth,” where doctors treat
patients over the phone or internet. It would allow Medicare providers
who are part of an accountable care association to offer patients cash
bonuses as incentives for healthy behaviors.
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The
bill increases discounts that pharmaceutical companies must give
seniors enrolled in the Medicare Part D drug plans, by making the
so-called “doughnut hole” smaller. This was a policy that was part of
the Affordable Care Act, but the new legislation would speed up
implementation by one year.
Funding changes for public health programs.
The
spending plan would cut $1.35 billion in funding to an Affordable Care
Act program meant to improve public health and prevention funding for
states and municipalities.
It
would extend funding for the Children’s Health Insurance Program for an
additional four years. Last month’s spending bill had already extended the program
for six years, so now CHIP will be funded for an entire decade. Another
popular program that delivers health care to low income children and
adults, the government-funded clinics known as Community Health Centers,
will also get a two-year funding extension.
Continued funding for abstinence education.
The bill would extend funding to abstinence-only sex education programs.
A break for Berea College.
The spending bill restores a provision that was stripped out of last year’s $1.5 trillion tax bill after the Senate parliamentarian objected to its inclusion.
The
bill would exempt Berea College, a small private college in Kentucky
that provides free tuition, from being subject to a new tax on large
higher education endowments that was included in last year’s tax law.
The
bill adds language that makes the new excise tax on investment income
applicable only to schools with “tuition-paying” students, shielding
Berea College, which does not charge tuition. The school is in the home
state of Senator Mitch McConnell, the majority leader.
Tax breaks for racetracks and horse owners continue.
Owners
of race horses and motor sports entertainment complexes would get an
extension of special tax treatment. Horse owners are allowed to
depreciate their horses over the course of three years. For racetracks,
the depreciation is over the course of seven years. Those breaks would
remain in place for 2017.
Extension and expansion of energy tax credits.
The
Senate bill features a multitude of tax breaks for renewable energy
sources that had been neglected in a 2015 deal to bolster wind and solar
power. These so-called “orphaned” technologies
include geothermal, small wind farms and fuel cells. Much like existing
credits for wind and solar power, these incentives would phase out
starting in 2020.
The bill also extends an existing production tax credit for nuclear power past 2020, which would benefit a pair of long-delayed reactors being built in Georgia that aren’t expected to come online before 2021.
Southern Company has said it may not be able to complete the reactors,
the only two still under construction in the United States, without the
credit.
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A
separate measure would greatly expand a tax credit for companies that
capture carbon dioxide from power plants or other polluting facilities
and pump it underground. Oil firms such as Occidental Petroleum have
been pumping captured CO2 into old wells in order to extract additional
oil. Some environmental groups also lobbied for the measure, arguing
that carbon capture technology, still in its infancy, could one day prove a crucial tool for tackling climate change.
The
bill retroactively extends tax credits for biodiesel, advanced biofuels
and fuel-cell vehicles through the end of 2017. Industry lobbyists had
unsuccessfully fought to get many of these measures included in the tax
overhaul bill passed by Congress in December. They could still face
resistance in the House.
A tax credit for mining safety.
The
bill extends a tax credit for 20 percent of an employers’ spending on
mine rescue team training costs, up to $10,000. A separate provision
allows the immediate deduction of a company’s investment in mine safety
equipment.
A special rate for timber sales.
The
bill continues a special tax rate of 23.8 percent for 2017 for gains
from timber sales, a break from the top rate of 35 percent that would
have otherwise applied.
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