There’s an article in The Hill about Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s recent change in strategy which involves less obstruction and more reliance on John Boehner’s House of Representatives for stalling or blocking the president’s agenda. One example of this is the recent vote to extend the Bush tax cuts for the bottom 98% of Americans. The Senate did not have to overcome a filibuster and was able to pass the law with 51 votes.
Now, let’s think about this. If the House doesn’t go along with the Senate and pass this tax cut extension, taxes will rise on all Americans who pay income tax. Also, since every Republican in the Senate opposed extending the Bush tax cuts, they all voted for a tax hike. Yet, in The Hill article, the Republicans sound like they relished the opportunity to vote against tax cuts for all but the top 2% of Americans.
McConnell told his colleagues in private that he wanted to put vulnerable Democrats such as Sens. Claire McCaskill (Mo.) and Jon Tester (Mont.) on record supporting a hefty tax increase.
“I think it was really smart because every Democrat other than Sen. Webb and Sen. Lieberman ended up voting for a bill that creates a definition between Republicans and Democrats on taxes,” said Sen. John Cornyn (Texas), the chairman of the Senate Republican fundraising arm. “It creates a real problem for Democratic incumbents who are running for reelection this time.”
One senior GOP aide said McConnell was eager to force endangered Democratic incumbents to vote on actual tax legislation instead of preliminary procedural issues, which can be minimized on the campaign trail.
This is all utter nonsense. To make any sense of it at all, you have to realize that there were actually two votes in the Senate. The Republicans offered an amendment that would have extended all of the Bush tax cuts for a year. Every Democrat, excepting Mark Pryor of Arkansas, voted against it. Even Joe Lieberman and Jim Webb voted against it. Even Jon Tester and Claire McCaskill voted against it, though they didn’t need to in order for it to be defeated. In this sense, the Democrats voted against a tax cut, even though no one would have actually seen their taxes go down. But they immediately followed that up by voting against a tax hike for everyone but the top two percent.
If that is all too complicated, let’s put it like this. Every Republican in the Senate voted in a way that will result in almost everyone’s taxes going up. All but two Democrats in the Senate voted to prevent taxes from going up on everyone but the top two percent. So, the Republicans plan on going out and running ads against Jon Tester and Claire McCaskill, saying that they voted for a giant tax increase, but they actually voted to keep taxes low for almost everyone. Yes, the GOP offered an amendment that would have kept taxes low for everyone, but it didn’t pass. Then they voted to raise taxes on almost everyone by opposing a bill that did pass.
It takes dishonesty and distortion to an incredible level to intentionally allow votes so that you can completely mischaracterize the meaning of those votes and run attack ads against your opponents.
It’s also a dubious strategy, because the Republicans have really been outflanked on the whole tax issue. McConnell’s strategy makes more sense as a way of deflecting pressure on himself and his caucus and putting it all on John Boehner. But Boehner is now in a box. They had been arguing that spending bills must originate in the House and so the Senate bill is unconstitutional. However, they can get around that easily, as they often do, by hollowing out an old bill and inserting the Senate bill’s language in it. They must have realized that their lame excuse for not acting on the Senate bill was inoperative, because Speaker Boehner announced yesterday that he will allow the same side-by-side votes that just took place in the Senate.
If he’s not bluffing, that means he thinks that he can get virtually all Republican members of the House to vote in a way that will raise taxes on all but the top two percent of earners…in an election year. I think maybe he can get that done, but it isn’t something someone who is serious about remaining Speaker would ask his caucus to do.
It is, however, something a party can consider doing if they have huge slush funds of billionaires’ money to run misleading advertisements. Thank you, Supreme Court.
