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Laws and sausages

Laws and sausages

There are items to dislike in the mammoth year-end tax and spending package ($1.8 trillion) approved by Congress and President Obama. But the fact that the Democratic administration and Republican congressional leaders could compromise at all on major legislation provides some encouragement. And the measure does a number of important things for the Toledo area and for Ohio.

Most important, the fiscal package maintains $300 million in annual funding for the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, a program that helps combat toxic algae in Lake Erie,  the source of Toledo’s drinking water. The initiative also works to reduce polluted runoff, restore fish and wildlife habitat, combat invasive species, and ensure that beaches stay open. 

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At long last, the bill prohibits the use of federal money to dump dredged material into open waters of Lake Erie if the state objects; open-lake dumping is a contributor to harmful algae blooms. And the measure encourages the use of the lake as a resource for development of wind energy.

The spending bill provides money to help communities such as Toledo upgrade their water and sewer systems to prevent pollution. A separate provision preserves a tax incentive for private land conservation; the use of conservation easements in northwest Ohio has helped prevent overdevelopment and maintain natural areas and working farms.

The package provides more than $95 million to renovate the federal courthouse in downtown Toledo, and to construct an annex to the building. That project will improve security at the courthouse and permit consolidation of several federal offices at the site. Another provision that extends development tax credits in low-income areas will help Toledo and other Ohio communities pursue economic revitalization projects.

The spending bill includes new money to help communities such as Toledo combat some of their worst scourges: addiction to heroin and prescription opioids, lead-based paint, and urban blight and home foreclosures.  Elsewhere in northwest Ohio, the Joint Systems Manufacturing Center in Lima will get substantial shares of the bill’s $500 million in funding for the Abrams battle tank and $1.1 billion for the Stryker armored combat vehicle. 

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The legislation preserves key expansions of two tax credits that are vital to working families: the Earned Income Tax Credit and the Child Tax Credit. More than 400,000 Ohio households, which generally earn low wages and include nearly 800,000 children, rely on these expanded credits to pay for such things as child care, car repair, and school supplies. That help enables these families to work, keep more of what they earn, and make ends meet.

Less positively, the $686 billion, 10-year tax cuts in the package include $417 billion in corporate tax breaks and credits that Congress didn’t pay for by closing other tax loopholes, according to the progressive advocacy group Americans for Tax Fairness. Some of these breaks, such as an extension of solar and wind energy tax credits, can boost Ohio’s economy. But  lawmakers chose not to use the fiscal package to discourage U.S. corporations from leaving the country to avoid paying taxes.

Ohio’s Republican senator, Rob Portman, voted against the package even after he contributed key language to it (Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown, who supported the legislation, also provided valuable proposals). Mr. Portman complained that the 2,000-page spending bill, which lawmakers had just a few days to review and could not amend, costs too much and relies excessively on budget gimmicks.

The senator is right; it’s a lousy way to do business. But the budget package makes important investments and prevented a government shutdown. These days, that seems about as much as Americans can expect from their elected officials in Washington.

First Published December 24, 2015, 5:00 a.m.

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