Face The State Staff Report
National debates are often mirrored on the state level, and Colorado experienced just that Wednesday, when House Finance Committee Democrats killed a proposed tax credit for buyers of new single-family homes, while at the same time a congressional conference committee removed a similar tax credit from the economic stimulus bill.
State Rep. Larry Liston, R-Colorado Springs, the bill's sponsor, said it was designed to provide an incentive for people to purchase new homes. House Bill 1212 would have allowed buyers of new single-family homes to receive a state tax credit of 3 percent of the purchase price, up to a maximum of $10,000. “This was a job creation bill that would have put people back to work,” Liston said.
The bill, however, came with a $40 million fiscal note, which in this economy is akin to a death sentence. Democrats on the committee voted unanimously against the measure, citing the high price tag as their reason. “The bottom line is: I don't see how we can pay the bill,” Rep. John Kefalas, D-Fort Collins, told the Rocky Mountain News.
U.S. Sen. Johnny Isakson, a Georgia Republican, crafted a comparable measure that he sought to have included in the economic stimulus plan that passed through Congress Wednesday. He proposed replacing a $7,500 tax credit for first-time homebuyers earning less than $150,000 with a $15,000 break for all income groups. The price tag for Isakson’s unsuccessful proposal: $35.5 billion.
Liston said he was surprised to learn of Isakson's proposal on the national level and that the two were not connected. "I've been talking about this for two and a half months," he said. "I was talking about this long before Sen. Isakson."
While the U.S. Senate approved Isakson’s provision for inclusion in the stimulus, with President Barack Obama saying it had “potential," a congressional conference committee had removed it from the final version of the stimulus, now slated to cost taxpayers $790 billion.