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.
they are sociopaths.
the entire lot of them
Sure, but they’re usually competent sociopaths.
Competant? I’ll give you McConnell is competant. No one else. Not in the senate not in the house, not at the pres level. And not too many at the statehouse level, either.
They were given a mandate by the folks who put them in office. They were given the biggest can of whupass in 40 years. And all they actually got out of it was a bunch of “my dick is bigger than yours” bills out of the house, sequestration from the Senate, and the Turtle Man crowing about how he can deliver. So could Tammany Hall.
These guys aren’t competant. They are the NY Giants playing Provine HS (Jackson, MS) and winning 10-7.
Nah, no copetance here.
I mean competent at politics, not governing. No, the Republicans haven’t been able to actually govern for almost 20 years, but they usually avoid running into political buzz saws like that.
Now cut that out!
Under the Senate bill, the top 2% ALSO get a tax cut…but they only get it on their first $250K of income. The GOP wants to give the top 2% a BIGGER tax cut than the rest of us.
Jesus. You’re right. My mistake.
Meh, folks like you care way too much about what could or couldn’t be turned into an ad come November.
The more important story is that the President has likely won in his attempt to secure 98% of the Bush tax cuts at the expense of the Norquist acolytes in the GOP. If the Republicans were smart, they could have jujitsu’d the Democrats to get bogged down in “We are the 99%” or millionaire’s vs. middle class non-distinctions and gotten a little more for their money. After all, any tax cut is a good tax cut, right? And lord knows Senate Dems are capable of wussing out.
Instead, they drove a hard line that looks to come up as an unequivocal loss. Some Republicans will have to vote to raise taxes on the upper 2% this winter, barring unforeseen circumstances. Both parties will probably just pretend the whole budget deal never happened as well, and just waylay that crap into the future.
Good work by the administration.
If tax cut is passed, revenue projections increase. Other issue is certainty about when the automatic cuts come. (Think Mitt will will level on this.)
Those two settled means no lame duck session.