Overview
House to Vote on Dynamic Scoring Rule: The House of Representatives is scheduled to vote tomorrow on amendments to the rules of the House of Representatives for the 114th Congress, including the addition of a rule that would require dynamic scoring for certain “major legislation.” Dynamic scoring attempts to account for changes in individuals’ and companies’ behavior that are expected to result from changed incentives caused by the adoption of legislation, and is used in forecasting the cost of such legislation. Generally, dynamic scoring would cause projections of revenue raised by tax-reform legislation to be higher than projections that use static scoring.
The new rule would require the Congressional Budget Office and the Joint Committee on Taxation, “to the extent practicable,” to “incorporate the budgetary effects of changes in economic output, employment, capital stock, and other macroeconomic variables resulting from” major legislation in scoring such legislation. Major legislation is defined as legislation that causes a gross budgetary effect, before incorporating macroeconomic effects, of 0.25 percent of GDP or greater in any fiscal year. Last year, the House passed dynamic scoring legislation that stalled in the Senate. Changes to the rules of the House of Representatives do not need to be approved by the Senate or the president.
The proposed rule is included in Section 2(c) of H. Res. 5, available here.
Pelosi Puts Focus on Inversions: In a letter to the Democratic caucus, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) wrote that corporate inversions would continue to be a focus of House Democrats in 2015. Ms. Pelosi wrote that she intended to reintroduce the Stop Corporate Expatriation and Invest in America’s Infrastructure Act, which would broaden the scope of inverted corporations that are treated as domestic corporations under Section 7874(b).
The Stop Corporate Expatriation and Invest in America’s Infrastructure Act of 2014 is available here.