Time's Up: Federal Provisions Set to Expire in January 2012

In January 2012, several federal tax and spending policies are scheduled to expire. These include emergency benefits for the long-term unemployed, indexing the alternative minimum tax (AMT) to inflation, the two-percent payroll tax holiday Americans enjoyed in 2011, and higher Medicare reimbursements for physicians, among others. Many of these policies have been extended by Congress and the president several times in the past. The Pew Fiscal Analysis Initiative finds that extending all of these provisions would raise the federal budget deficit in 2012 by $152 billion. Making most of them permanent would raise the national debt by $1.8 trillion over the next decade.

The following infographic breaks down the cost of extending these expiring policies: