For a quick overview of what California’s new water bill package means, I can do no better than point you to the blog post by Steve Doyle of Brookfield Homes.
There’s lots more devilishly intricate parts of this legislation, of course, but this overview lets you grok the purpose of each of the five bills.
Doyle helpfully included links to each bill, so you can read the full text. Would that I had found this post sooner! I just spent much of the morning tracking this down.
I don’t have the vote count yet, but the Mortgage Bankers Association says the House of Representatives passed the extension of the homebuyer tax credit . Now all the bill awaits is a presidential signature.
Update: The bill passed the House 403-12. The Senate passed the same bill yesterday 98-0.
The U.S. Senate passed the bill containing the homebuyer tax credit expansion and extension unanimously on Wednesday, 98-0.
Looks like a possible extension of the homebuyer tax credit could potentially take another couple of days to come to a vote:
The following comes from Congress Daily, which has been quoted by Progress Illinois:
Monday’s vote cut off debate on the substitute amendment from Majority Leader Reid and Finance Chairman Max Baucus adding the tax breaks to the underlying unemployment insurance bill. Another cloture vote, this time on the amended bill, could occur as late as 11:40 tonight unless Republicans yield back time or agree to vitiate cloture. Even if cloture is invoked, Republicans would have up to another 30 hours to debate, pushing final passage off until Thursday.
So, there could be a vote tomorrow, or not until Thursday.
Looks like Congress will be extending that homebuyer tax credit afterall. First time homebuyers, known to the IRS as people who haven’t owned a home in the last three years, have been frantically trying to get into contract on a house in time to get an $8,000 federal tax credit due to expire on Nov. 30. But some of them have had such a hard time outbidding cash buyers that they despaired of making the deadline.
Well, they’re in luck. The Senate just passed a cloture motion to end debate on a bill, 85-2. that will extend the tax credit to April 30, 2010. The bill should find it’s way through floor votes in both Senate and the House by the end of tomorrow, if Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has his way.
But the bill will not just be extended, it will also be expanded. From Bloomberg:
Homebuyers who have lived in their prior residences for at least five years could receive a credit of $6,500 under the plan. Couples earning as much as much as $225,000 and individuals earning up to $125,000 would also qualify. That’s up from the current $75,000 limit for individuals and $150,000 for couples.
Also, anyone taking the credit from a home purchased in 2010 would be able to take the credit in 2009.
So, to recap: Homebuyer tax credit takes a major step toward extension and expansion. No doubt there’s a great rhyming headline there somewhere.
I just got a voice mail from Jessica Duarte, one of three frustrated home buyers I mentioned in my story in today’s paper. She was pleased to tell me that the article must have been good luck: Her bid was accepted on the condo she’s pictured looking at in the paper. I think I’m going to petition upper management to change our motto: The North County Times, your four-leaf clover in times of trouble.
As universities go, The House That Roger Revelle Built is a puppy, founded just four decades ago. But it’s one of the top dogs in pulling in federal research dollars. And according to the National Science Foundation, UCSD has once again ranked 6th nationwide.
UCSD got $491 million in federal R&D money and spent a total of $842 million in total R&D activities for fiscal year 2008.
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(This is my early report from Biocom’s investor conference today and Tuesday).
By BRADLEY J. FIKES
SAN DIEGO —- Biotech’s golden allure is mostly tarnished for investors, who have crammed into the technology sector chasing after the Apples and Googles. But there’s some signs of a modest turnaround, experts said Monday at a life sciences investors forum.
Biotech companies will have to squeeze to make every dollar count, and more mergers and acquisitions will take place for lack of any alternative, said panelists during a morning discussion. The forum was sponsored by Biocom, the San Diego-based life sciences trade group.
However, federal stimulus money is at last flowing to the life sciences sector, providing some reason for optimism, said panelist Dan Owczarski, a senior health care analyst at Avondale Partners, LLC.
“We’re seeing big numbers coming out in grants being awarded,” Owczarski said. “Now the cash is going to start flowing down.”
The largest slice of the money so far appears to be going to the life science “tool companies,” which provide research products used by academic researchers, government agencies and other biotech companies, Owczarski said. These tool providers include companies such as Illumina Inc., based in San Diego, and Carlsbad’s Life Technologies.
Some smaller biotech companies are benefitting from federal grants for H1N1, or swine flu, and biodefense research, said Jason Kantor, an analyst at RBC Capital Markets. However, Kantor described those as “niche” areas, not enough for an industrywide upswing.
The various federal grants are mostly going for early-stage research, the panelists said. That’s a good thing, they said, because investors aren’t willing to fund early-stage research anyway.
Panelists agreed that biotech as an investment sector is at the bottom of the cycle of investment popularity. Companies hoping to get funding over the near term will have to show results within about 18 months to get funding interest.
The forum takes place Monday and Tuesday at the Hyatt Regency in the UTC area.
bfikes@nctimes.com
For all the discussion of extending the new home buyer federal tax credit, it seems like no one remembered to check in with the administration. The credit is very popular among congress members, several of whom have proposed various kinds of extensions.
But Shaun Donovan, the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, told a Senate Committee today that the administration needs to review the data and do some cost-benefit analysis before it decides whether or not to back an extension.
This is from the Wall Street Journal’s Developments blog:
Donovan told a Senate hearing on Tuesday that there was “clear evidence” that the tax credit had benefited the housing market. But he said that the “real issue” in considering an extension was whether an extension was worth the cost to the government in lost tax revenue.
The actual cost of the credit won’t be known “until Americans have filed their tax returns,” he said. “And so, we feel it’s very important within the administration that we gather as much data as we possible can in advance of that before we make a final decision.”
Seven research centers around the country are sharing a $12.2 million grant to create a kind of Facebook for scientists. The goal is to help scientists find potential research collaborators, speeding up the process of scientific discovery.
The two-year grant, from the National Center for Research Resources, goes to a consortium led by the University of Florida, It includes The Scripps Research Institute; Indiana University; Weill Cornell Medical College; Wahington University at St. Louis and the Ponce School of Medicine in Puerto Rico.
The network is being named VIVO, after open-source search software that categorizes and organizes results to make them more usable for researchers. Eventually, the NIH wants to make VIVO a national network for scientists.