Senator Kyrsten Sinema (D-Arizona) announced Thursday evening that she has reached a deal with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York) that could pave the way for Democrats to pass their budget reconciliation package. The deal would remove a provision that would have closed the carried interest loophole from the package that was announced last week by Leader Schumer and Senator Joe Manchin (D-West Virginia). The agreement includes a new excise tax on stock buybacks of 1 percent that will bring in $73 billion, far more than the $14 billion raised by the carried interest provision. The deal with Sinema also adds roughly $5 billion in drought resiliency to the bill and changes portions of the corporate minimum tax structure to remove accelerated depreciation of investments from the agreement. Manufacturers had raised concerns that the original corporate minimum tax proposal would negatively affect their businesses by deferring or denying the benefit of accelerated depreciation. The changed deal would preserve the benefit of accelerated depreciation for at least some manufacturers. That depreciation-related change will cost about $40 billion. The bill will still reduce the deficit by $300 billion, the number that Schumer and Manchin have touted over the past week.
The parliamentarian will continue hearing arguments about whether the bill meets the chamber’s stringent rules for evading a filibuster. A ruling on prescription drugs could come as early as Friday, with the tax provisions coming after.
The Senate is not in session today, but will reconvene tomorrow, Saturday, with a vote at 12:00 P.M. on a motion teeing up the process for a vote on the legislation. That will begin up to 20 hours of floor debate followed by an open-ended series of amendment votes, known as a vote-a-rama, and then a vote on final passage of the legislation likely early next week.
