In the coming days, the House will pass a tax bill that would extend the Bush tax cuts entirely for one year. This stands in slight contrast to a Senate-passed bill that extends the same tax cuts for the first $250,000 of income. But what I didn’t realize is that the House bill will also set up a mandated process for tax reform that would weaken the rules of the Senate in an attempt to fast-track the effort.

The reason that the extension only lasts one year is because of this tax reform process, unveiled by House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp.

Here’s an almost completely unremarked-upon side effect of the foreclosure fraud settlement: the tax implications. If you are one of the lucky few eligible to receive a principal reduction from the settlement, when the banks aren’t paying off their penalty bulldozing homes and waiving deficiency judgments, you have to reckon with this: because of the expiration of a Congressional law, every dollar you receive in principal reduction would be viewed for tax purposes as income, and thusly taxed. Most of the people needing a principal reduction are in dire financial straits; they wouldn’t need a write-down otherwise. So now, we’re going to hit them with a big tax bill that they can pay for with money they don’t have.

Todd Tucker with Public Citizen will be liveblogging the House Ways and Means Committee full committee hearing on the pending free trade agreements with Colombia, Panama and South Korea, and job creation. You can find more details about the panelists scheduled to testify today at the Committee’s site at this link.

I think it’s valuable that Pelosi wouldn’t give a vote of confidence to anyone on the deficit commission but who she appointed, and that she savaged the idea of raising the retirement age or cutting benefits. In the end, that could play a role when the vote-counting begins.

This is very good news, if true. Republicans frequently gun for Pete Stark because he’s fearless and he doesn’t back down from a fight. I was concerned that House Democrats would shy away from elevating Stark to such a powerful position, but Pelosi did indeed select him to replace Charlie Rangel as the head of the panel. And since John Boehner is objecting to the temporary nature of Rangel stepping down, Stark may get the seat permanently.