As Senate Passes Spending Bills, MSCI Webinar Guest Explains Why Metals Industry Must Contact Lawmakers

The U.S. Senate approved a $1.2 trillion infrastructure spending bill on August 10 on a strong bipartisan vote. (Click here to read more about the provisions contained in this legislation.)

While the U.S. House of Representatives is coming back early from its August recess, and will be in session starting August 23, it reportedly will NOT vote on the measure until lawmakers in the chamber considers Democrats’ budget resolution.

The Senate also agreed to that measure last week. After approving the infrastructure bill on a bipartisan 69-30 vote, the Senate voted 50-49 along party lines to approve the ten-year, $3.5 trillion budget and tax resolution.

The budget resolution provides congressional committees with instructions on spending and revenue topline figures for fiscal year 2022, under which Senate committees now will work to draft the detailed legislative changes and program spending.

This resolution, outlined by Senate Democrats in a memo that is available here, also includes instructions for the Senate Finance Committee to write legislation that would:

• Raise corporate and international tax rates for businesses;
• Increase income and capital gains tax rates for high-income individuals;
• Expand Internal Revenue Service tax enforcement; and
• Impose an import fee on products and services that have a significant impact on climate change.

The S-Corp Association estimates that these tax increases will cost U.S. businesses and families about $1.75 trillion. National Association of Wholesalers Chief Government Relations Officer joined MSCI President and CEO Bob Weidner for an exclusive webinar for MSCI members last week where West detailed how these tax increases would impact corporations and pass-through companies.

West also discussed how the budget resolution potentially could be used to upend decades-old labor and employment law. She urged MSCI member company leaders and employees to call or write to their senators and members of Congress to urge them to vote against the $3.5 trillion budget resolution.

Click here to listen to the August 12, 2021 webinar. Contact information for U.S. senators here. Contact information for U.S. House lawmakers is here.

West also recently joined the S-Corp Association podcast to discuss how White House and Senate tax proposals will impact family-owned and small business. Listen to that conversation here.

One proposal that also could be on lawmakers’ radar: repealing last-in, first out (LIFO). While there is not yet any formal written proposal to include LIFO repeal in Senate tax legislation, the LIFO Coalition, which MSCI a member of, has heard legislation could be coming soon. Stay tuned to Connecting the Dots for more information as this story develops.

The good news is that some moderate House Democrats already are working together to oppose the tax increases in the $3.5 trillion budget bill. As The Hill reported last Friday, a group of nine lawmakers sent a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) threatening to block a multitrillion-dollar budget bill until party leaders enact the Senate’s bipartisan infrastructure package.

The letter said, “The country is clamoring for infrastructure investment and commonsense, bipartisan solutions,” reads the letter. “With the livelihoods of hardworking American families at stake, we simply can’t afford months of unnecessary delays and risk squandering this one-in-a-century, bipartisan infrastructure package. It’s time to get shovels in the ground and people to work.”