New House Democrats wary on taxes, bailout

Another Democrat who appears to have won in what had been a Republican district is Virginia’s Tom Perriello. Although the state Board of Elections has not yet certified his victory, Perriello is 745 votes ahead of the Republican incumbent Rep. Virgil Goode out of more than 300,000 votes cast.

Like some of his fellow Democratic freshman, Perriello is a skeptic about the Big Three bailout: “I think we’ve done too much rewarding the status quo instead of rewarding innovation. I’d much rather see a stimulus package that rewards whatever company comes up with a 100 miles-per-gallon car and 40-miles-per-gallon truck first.”

Could Hyundai get the prize? “I think we should do it for American companies. I think we want the auto industry in America to be reborn,” he said.

Who will pay for recovery?
Representing a solidly Democratic district in Colorado anchored by Boulder, newly elected Democrat Jared Polis was less categorical in rejecting a tax increase.

“I look forward to seeing President-elect Obama’s proposal,” he said Monday. “We need to make sure we don’t finance our recovery on the shoulders of future generations by increasing our legacy of debt, but we do have to have a discussion of how we can have fiscal responsibility while we also stimulate the economy.”

Another new Democrat from Colorado is Betsy Markey, who defeated Republican Rep. Marilyn Musgrave. Markey said Monday she did not support an idea floated by Obama in the campaign of raising the tax on capital gains from the sale of stocks and other investments. “This is a time when we need to invest in our economy, and I don’t want to take any measures that will stifle that.”

“What I read (about Obama’s intentions) is that in the midst of a recession we probably would not have any tax increases,” said Representative-elect Dan Maffei of New York.

“I campaigned frankly somewhat more to the conservative side of Obama,” Maffei said.

Families earning $250,000 shouldn’t necessarily pay higher taxes, he said. “Middle-class people even in my district, two-earner families, can often make more than that. And they’re certainly not wealthy. So I think we have to look at tax policies, but certainly now is not the time to be raising taxes on capital gains and other things that might generate growth in the economy.”

Learn from Hoover's mistakes
Hearkening back to President Herbert Hoover’s errors during the Great Depression, Maffei said: “We don’t want to make the same mistakes that Hoover made… We want to make sure we continue to make investments and allow investments on the private side.”

Maffei, who won a seat in Syracuse, N.Y., that had been held for 20 years by Republican Rep. Jim Walsh, said the economy is his district is “pretty dismal,” but he added, “The one advantage we’ve got now is that we’ve dealt with a lot of layoffs and plant closings for years, actually for decades. So for us in some ways we’re better off than a lot of places that are just encountering the bubble bursting. We never had a bubble to burst.”

If GM, Ford or Chrysler were to enter bankruptcy proceedings, Maffei said, there is one plant in his district that would be directly affected: a facility in East Syracuse formerly owned by Chrysler which is now owned by Magna, a Canadian firm. “They still do a lot of business with General Motors and Chrysler,” he said.

Can Congress wait until January to enact a bill to provide funding for the Big Three U.S. automakers?

“Whether they can or not, they shouldn’t,” Maffei said. “We need to put something together quickly. But just a money bailout, throwing money at the problem, I don’t think is the solution either.”

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