Is this a Second Stimulus?

“American Jobs and Closing Tax Loopholes Act of 2010” (Amendment to HR 4213, to be debated in both the House and Senate next week starting Tuesday, with an intent to pass it and have Obama sign by Memorial Day)

Brief overview:

$174B – spending (B = Billion)

$40B – offsets (revenue)

$134B net spending

(would you call this a second stimulus?)

Emergency spending (not subject to pay-go):

$47B – Unemployment extensions (currently cutoff at June 2, they would be extended to December 31, 2010. Note this does not add additional “tiers”, it only expands the cutoff dates. Once you’ve received your regular, 4 tiers of emergency, and extended benefits, That Is It – your 99 weeks).

$24B – FMAP extensions (federal Medicaid match)

$7.7B – Cobra extensions (federal 65% pickup)

Additional spending highlights:

$64B – Medicare “doc fix” (temporary 3-year continued higher reimbursement rates)

$19.6B – Business tax credits (R&D, AMT credit for domestic capital investment, leasehold cost recovery, economically distressed tax credits, other)

$5.0B – Tax credits for individuals (state/local tax deduction, property tax deduction, tuition deduction, teacher expense deduction)

$2.4B – Increase disaster loss expenditures (think Gulf Coast)

$1.4B – Agricultural supports (did you know we have both a Wool Trust Fund and a Cotton Trust Fund, supporting domestic industries?)

$1.3B – Alternative energy (biodiesel, biomass, heavy hybrids, liquid fuels (but not woody biomass aka black liquor as the OR delegation has been pushing), green homes, energy efficient windows, etc.)

$4.6B – Settlements (Cobell, Pigford) – Native American trust accounts, black farmer restitution

$10.9B – Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund – increase 8 cents/gallon tax to 32 cents/gallon to increase fund solvency in the case of, um, national oil disasters

Closing tax loopholes (revenue):

$14.3B – closing foreign tax loopholes

$18.6B – carried interest (instead of all hedge fund manager’s income being taxed at lower capital gains tax rate, some is taxed at income tax rate)

$9.6B – service professionals not exempt from social security income cap

Something for everyone? In the past, extensions to unemployment have been held up by Republicans over a lack of emergency designation. Now they are designated emergency (interesting how much weight a single word carries), does this mean no fighting and wasting Congressional floor time next week?