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Why Democrats cross the aisle for a tax bill
Pelosi condemns ‘immoral’ measure, but a few on her team see sense in it
WASHINGTON - President Bush and House GOP leaders scored a big victory last week as 225 Republicans and nine Democrats joined forces to pass a bill extending the 15 percent tax rate on capital gains and dividends that Congress enacted two years ago.
Three Republicans voted against the bill, as did 193 Democrats.
The nine Democrats who voted "yes," bucked House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, who denounced the bill as “immoral" because the “tax cuts” would go “mostly for America's wealthiest.” Pelosi contended that there was a connection between the tax rate extension and a spending cut measure the House passed last month which would, among other things, reduce outlays for nutrition assistance and allow states to impose higher premiums on Medicaid recipients.
So why did the nine Democrats break ranks to vote for the GOP tax bill?
The aisle crossers
All but one of the nine Democrats come from districts carried by President Bush in 2004. Eight come from Southern or border states, where Republicans are dominant. And the one non-Southerner, Rep. Melissa Bean, is a first-termer who represents a Republican-leaning district west of Chicago.
Bean won her seat last year by toppling 35-year incumbent Rep. Phil Crane, who GOP strategists say had fallen out of touch with his district. The non-partisan Cook Political Report rates Bean's 2006 re-election race a toss-up.
If one accepts the theory that members vote according to their constituents’ economic interests, then Bean’s vote makes sense. In her district, the median household income is 50 percent higher than the national median. Higher-income taxpayers are more likely than lower-income people to own significant amounts of capital assets and to enjoy capital gains.
Despite her votes against Pelosi on the tax issue, as well as the bankruptcy reform bill and the Central American free trade accord, Bean has strong support — a total of more that $100,000 — from Pelosi’s political action committee, Rep. Rahm Emmanuel’s PAC (Emmanuel is the head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee) and the funds of such Democrats as Reps. Barbara Lee of California and Jan Schakowsky of Illinois, whose voting records are well to the left of Bean’s.
According to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, as of the end of September, Bean had $1.1 million in cash on hand, an impressive war chest for a freshman.
If the Democrats are to gain control of the House in next year’s elections, Pelosi needs Bean and the eight others who voted for the tax bill to hold on to their seats.
Bean is number one GOP target
Of all 202 Democratic incumbents, Bean “is our number one target,” in next year’s House elections, said Ed Patru, a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC). “And she knows that, which is why she routinely abandons her party on these votes.”
The fate of the tax bill depends on negotiations with the Senate. If OK'd by both houses, the 15 percent rates would last until 2010. Those tax rates had been 20 percent or higher prior to 2003.
In her bid to defeat the bill, Pelosi sought to compare its impact with that of the spending bill approved by the House last month.
That spending bill would cut outlays for nutrition assistance by $733 million from 2006 to 2015, penalize elderly people who violate federal rules prohibiting the shielding of their assets in order to qualify for Medicaid nursing home care, and allow states to impose higher premiums on some Medicaid recipients. (According to the Congressional Budget Office, premiums would range from 1 percent to 3 percent of family income.)
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