The tax extenders bill currently being cobbled together in the Senate (the House passed its bill already) would provide some much needed tax break extenders for job creation along with benefits and health care subsidies for the unemployed. This is potentially the last chance this session that Congress has a chance to do much in the way of job creation. This bill doesn't do a lot for jobs, but what it does is critical.
And to do it, it's going to take revenue--revenue in the form of closing a tax loophole for money managers, one that allows their income from money management to not actually be taxed as income, but as "carried interest" as though it were investment income rather than salary or wages. What does the resulting loss of revenue from that loophole look like? This:
(Click on image for larger version, and an action page where you can tell your Senator to close this loophole.)
There's been opposition in the Dem caucus in the Senate to closing this loophole. Senators Kerry and Cantwell initially opposed this provision, but they've been awfully quiet about it since their opposition was widely publicized. Financial services lobbyists are really opposed spreading the fiction that closing this loophole--get this--will hurt cancer patients.
Closing this tax loophole is critical not only to get those unemployment benefits and COBRA subsidies renewed, but to start in on the long process of correcting the vast gulf of income inequality in our country.