Lawmakers face difficult time finding ways to pay for legislation

With a slew of job-creation bills on the agenda, lawmakers will face a difficult time finding ways to pay for legislation following passage of a paid-for healthcare law.

Maine Republican Sen. Olympia Snowe said expanding spending in the comprehensive healthcare law has essentially robbed other bills of valuable offsets. The move could stall legislation, including a small business jobs package backed by Snowe.

Several offsets were shifted from the tax extenders and other bills to help pay for the healthcare measure, including the black liquor provision. 

"A lot of the offsets that were used for unemployment benefits and the tax extenders were utilized for healthcare reform in order to expand it," she told reporters Tuesday. "That reverberates, it affects other issues critically important like unemployment benefits and the tax extenders."

She said lawmakers should've stuck with their offsets plans.

"We had an agreement and we should've made that sacrosanct, protected it and not usurped those offsets to expand the healthcare bill," she said. "Now we're compounding the deficit problem."

Snowe said she is working with Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus on options for offsets for several bills but expects the going to be "very difficult."

"I don't think we'd be in the stalemate we're in today in respect to unemployment benefits had they not used offsets for the yearlong extension," she said. "Now we're having this debate on a monthly basis."

She said it was "fiscally imprudent" to have taken agreed upon offsets and used them for healthcare reform. Jobs should be the "No. 1 priority here" but it "keeps getting relegated to the back seat." 

Pay-as-you-go rules will make it tough for lawmakers in either chamber to push for bills that aren't paid for, regardless of whether the spending is deemed an emergency or not. Democrats have been trying to pass an extension of unemployment benefits, among other jobs issues under the emergency spending designation because funds are running low with so many people out of work. 

The lack of options could force lawmakers to consider carried interest, which taxes compensation at lower capital gains rates instead of higher marginal rates. The issue is expected to arise as part of talks on possible changes to the tax code.