The government has asked the committee to examine the proposals before the finalised bill is introduced - and their first group of witnesses include Age UK, Carers UK, the TUC, the Institute for Fiscal Studies, the Pensions Policy Institute, former government pensions policy adviser Dr Ros Altmann, former Labour minister Baroness Hollis of Heigham and Professor Jay Ginn (Institute of Gerontology, King's College London), Women's Budget Group.

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"If they wanted it to be permanent, they would have needed 60 votes instead of 50 and they knew they didn't have them, " says Chris Edwards , director of fiscal policy at the Cato Institute in Washington, D.

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But then again, the suggestion was out there that maybe the U.S. would at some point decide to institute monetary and fiscal policy.

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Unless capacity growth has improved, it suggests that fiscal policy has been looser than previously thought, says Carl Emmerson of the Institute for Fiscal Studies.

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