House Democratic leaders struggled Thursday night to clear legislation aimed at avoiding a Jan. 1 increase in income taxes, even as rank-and-file liberals argued vehemently it included an unforgivable giveaway to the rich.
“This bill is largely a mishmash of rejected Republican ideas that cost too much to accomplish too little,” said Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Texas. “The Republicans will rule the House for the next two years; let’s not give them an early start today.”
Doggett made his comments as the House began debate, but the speechmaking was interrupted after an hour so leaders could reassess the legislation’s prospects.
Numerous officials said a vote was still likely Thursday evening, but a postponement to Friday also appeared possible.
The bill provides a two-year extension of tax cuts enacted when George W. Bush was president, avoiding an increase at all income levels that would otherwise occur on New Year’s Day.
It would also renew an expiring program of benefits for the long-term unemployed, and enact a reduction in Social Security taxes for 2011 that would amount to $1,000 for an individual earning $50,000 a year. The bill’s cost, $858 billion over two years, would be tacked on to the federal deficit, a sore spot with deficit hawks in both parties.
The Senate approved the measure on Wednesday on a bipartisan vote of 81-19, scarcely more than a week after President Barack Obama announced he and Republicans had agreed on the general outlines. It marked the first major reach across party lines since midterm elections in which Republicans won control of the House and strengthened their Senate minority.
Obama has urged the House to approved the measure unchanged, calling the bill a good compromise with Republicans that would help the economy recover from the worst recession in decades while providing assistance to the unemployed.
But his pleas have failed to satisfy critics in the House who are adamantly opposed to an easing of the estate tax, a concession Obama made to Republicans.
As a result, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the rest of the House Democratic leadership have spent recent days trying to satisfy liberals inside the party who want to kill — or at least change — the bill, without running the risk of having taxes rise for millions on Jan. 1.
Republicans have left them little maneuvering room, warning they may walk away from their agreement with Obama if the measure is changed.
Nor was the tax bill the only priority that the White House and congressional leaders worked on as the year — and their control of both houses of Congress — neared an end.
Temporary funding for the federal government expires over the weekend, and Democrats want to enact a pork barrel-stuffed spending measure before conservatives take over the House in January.
Obama still hopes to push ratification of a new arms control treaty with Russia through the Senate, and the White House and party leaders seek legislation to let openly gay servicemen and servicewomen remain in the military.
The estate tax portion of the tax bill, as drafted, would allow $5 million of each spouse’s estate to pass to heirs without taxation, with the balance subjected to a 35 percent rate.
Many Democrats favor an alternative to reduce the amount that can be inherited tax free to $3.5 million, and tax the balance at 45 percent.
Supporters said that, if approved, the change would expose an additional 6,600 estates to taxes in 2011, and the government would collect $23 billion over two years as a result.
Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., one of the critics of the Obama-GOP agreement, said it is important for opponents to have the opportunity to vote on alternatives, even if they have no chance of passing.
“This is the last opportunity we have,” he said, noting that Congress will soon adjourn for the year and Republicans will control the House in January.
Other tax cuts, enacted in the past decade, include a more generous child tax credit, breaks for college students, lower taxes on capital gains and dividends and a series of business tax breaks designed to encourage investment. All would be extended if the legislation passes.
The jobless benefits that would be renewed would go to individuals who have been laid off more than 26 weeks but less than 99. Checks average about $300 a week.
Numerous business tax breaks that are due to expire would also be extended, as would a series of provisions relating to energy taxes.
Among them is the federal subsidy for ethanol, supported by many veteran lawmakers from Midwestern states but targeted for cuts or possible extinction by conservatives who will take office in January.
House Speaker-designate John Boehner, R-Ohio, speaks to the media after a meeting with newly elected Republican governors on Capitol Hill in Washington Wednesday, Dec. 1, 2010.(AP Photo/Alex Brandon)(Credit: Alex Brandon)
Did you hear? The method by which House Democrats voted in favor of extending low tax rates for all households but not extending an even lower top marginal rate on particularly high-earning households was declared to be “chicken crap” by the next speaker of the House of Representatives. Not that Boehner is against “middle-class tax cuts,” or what-have-you. He is outraged at the maneuvering. Because I guess this is his first day in this “House of Representatives” place.
And his “chicken crap” quote made its way to cable news, and Drudge, and Twitter, because it is amusing to hear a grown man pretend he swears like a character in an edited-for-broadcast-on-basic-cable cop movie, but also because other people apparently agree that it was “chicken crap” to hold this vote in this fashion.
I am no longer surprised by the strategic ineptitude of the White House. The fact that, in order to avoid procedural chicanery by the Republicans, House Democrats had to engage in procedural chicanery in order to hold a purely symbolic vote is similarly unsurprising. But the sight of a professional observer of politics finding the inner strength necessary to whip up any sort of high dudgeon about this procedural chicanery is, I admit, puzzling. And yet here’s National Review’s Daniel Foster — no moron — sounding positively disgusted to see mildly tricky parliamentary maneuvering.
Dear Corner readers, I know you thought your days of worrying about “deem-and-pass” rules, “ping-ponging,” and other congressional arcana were over when the president signed the Affordable Care Act. But it looks like House Democrats had one bit of wild procedural abuse left in them for the lame duck.
Oh, “deem-and-pass”! That sounded so scary once! “Ping-ponging”! That sounded much less scary but it was also a terrible abuse of power that never happened!
Alex Pareene writes about politics for Salon and is the author of "The Rude Guide to Mitt." Email him at apareene@salon.com and follow him on Twitter @pareene
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The tax cut bill considered by the House on Thursday isn’t merely disappointing, it’s “chicken crap.” And Rep. Rob Bishop’s three-piece suit?
“I told Mr. Bishop on the way in that just because he inherited this suit from his grandfather didn’t mean he had to wear it,” House Republican leader John Boehner teased his friend Thursday. “But his hair looks good.”
Thus sayeth the next speaker of the House, purveyor of a far more cheeky style than his proper predecessor, Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Boehner, one of a dozen children of their bar-owning father, is given to smoking, tanning, golfing and teasing people he likes most. He’s also a weeper at key public moments and liked for his geniality by many lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.
The famously composed Pelosi, in contrast, is not known to have used even salty language in public. In private, the California Democrat might express her displeasure with something by describing it as “doggy doo” or just “poo,” those who know her say.
Boehner often comes right out with it, even when cameras are rolling.
Asked about the Democrats’ bill Thursday to extend Bush-era tax cuts only for the first $250,000 of income, the Ohio Republican was blunt. The Democrats’ bill, unlike the Republican proposal to extend the cuts for every American, has no chance of passing the Senate. So do House Democrats risk losing any glint of bipartisan goodwill by bringing it up at all?
“I’m trying to catch my breath so I don’t refer to this maneuver going on today as chicken crap, all right?” Boehner said Thursday at a news conference. “But this is nonsense, all right? The election was one month ago. We are 23 months from the next election, and the political games have already started trying to set up the next election.”
At another point during the Thursday press conference, Oregon Republican Greg Walden, chairman of the GOP’s transition to power, said one big change will be a reduction in the number of commemorative resolutions of the House considers every day. But one of his examples was a Boehner golf hero.
“If Americans knew we spent this week honoring and saluting golf legend Chi Chi Rodriguez … while their taxes are about to go up and our national debt is exploding, they’d send us all packing,” Walden said.
Boehner frowned.
“Now, there’s nothing wrong with Chi Chi,” Walden quickly added, glancing over his shoulder at the speaker-to-be. The House just has more important things to do, Walden said.
Boehner didn’t dispute that premise. But he stepped up to the microphone, teased Bishop about his suit, and added this:
“Let me also express my apologies to my friend Chi Chi Rodriguez,” Boehner said.
House Democrats elected Nancy Pelosi to remain as their leader Wednesday despite massive party losses in this month’s congressional elections that prompted some lawmakers to call for new leadership.
Pelosi, the nation’s first female House speaker, will become minority leader when Republicans assume the majority in the new Congress in January.
She defeated moderate Democratic Rep. Heath Shuler of North Carolina, 150-43, in secret balloting in a lengthy closed-door gathering of House Democrats in the Capitol.
Pelosi, 70, overcame a rebellion from party centrists, and even some fellow liberals, who argued that the party needs to offer a new face of leadership after losing at least 60 House seats on Nov. 2. She remains popular among the liberals who dominate the party’s House caucus. But Shuler’s level of support — plus an earlier 129-68 vote against postponing the election that Pelosi wanted to wrap up quickly — underscored the degree of discontent in a party that Pelosi had largely bended to her will in the past four years.
Republicans voted to keep John Boehner of Ohio as their top House leader. Boehner, who celebrated his 61st birthday Wednesday, had no opposition, and will become speaker in the new Congress. Rep. Eric Cantor, R-Va., will become majority leader.
Many House Democrats defended Pelosi, who said the bad economy and high unemployment were the reasons for her party’s election losses.
But others said Republicans had found too much success in running ads all over the country attacking Pelosi and linking her to other Democrats.
“The truth is, she is the face that defeated us in this last election,” said Rep. Allen Boyd, D-Fla., who lost his reelection bid this month.
Rep. Tim Ryan, D-Ohio, had wanted to give party members more time to mull the election’s meaning and its impact on leadership decisions.
“We’ve got to get our message right,” Ryan said. “After a loss this substantial, there’s a lot of people that just think we need to take our time and reflect about the direction we’re going in, what issues we’re going to focus on, what could we have done better….It’s important that the next step that we take is very well thought out.”
Rep. Steny Hoyer of Maryland, a leader of moderate Democrats, kept the party’s No. 2 House post. Rep. Jim Clyburn, D-S.C., the House’s highest-ranking black member, is in line to be elected to a new position called “assistant leader.” Despite the new title, he will remain the House Democrats’ third-ranking leader.
President Barack Obama has invited congressional leaders of both parties to the White House, a postelection session expected this week but now put off until Nov. 30. The White House said Tuesday that Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell asked for the delay because of scheduling conflicts in organizing their caucuses.
The week’s events offered scant evidence that Democrats, who often quarrel among themselves, will become more cohesive in the wake of their 60-seat House loss.
Shuler, for instance, showed no interest in mimicking the solidarity that House Republicans displayed during the past four years, when they voted unanimously or nearly unanimously against many high-profile initiatives by Democrats, including Obama.
“It’s very frustrating when I see everyone voting in bloc,” Shuler told reporters, because Americans are diverse and crave bipartisan solutions.
Republicans took a different tack after the 2006 election, which cost them the House majority they had held for 12 years. Within a day, then-Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., said he would step down as party leader in the next Congress.
House Republicans soon coalesced around Boehner, and he persuaded them to consistently oppose Democrats despite what some people saw as anti-GOP rebukes from voters in 2006 and 2008.
——
Associated Press writers Jim Abrams, Laurie Kellman, Julie Hirschfeld Davis and Donna Cassata contributed to this report.
(This version CORRECTS that Cantor will be majority leader, not whip.)
Democratic critics of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi have failed in their effort to postpone a vote on keeping her as the party’s leader. The California Democrat hopes to secure the job in a vote later Wednesday by Democrats who will be in the House next year.
Pelosi’s mostly liberal allies were confident she would win then, particularly given the Democrats’s 129-68 vote to proceed with the leadership election. Massachusetts Rep. Barney Frank, a close ally of Pelosi’s, predicted she would win overwhelmingly.
Pelosi was a lightning rod in the midterm elections for Republicans who portrayed her as a leftist out of touch with mainstream Americans. Democrats lost more than 60 seats to Republicans in the Nov. 2 election.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP’s earlier story is below.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Despite suffering near-historic election losses this month, House Democrats appear ready to keep their leadership team intact, with Nancy Pelosi of California still on top.
Both parties will hold closed-door House leadership elections Wednesday. But the main focus will involve the soon-to-be minority party, the Democrats.
Pelosi, the nation’s first female speaker, appeared to soothe enough angry colleagues Tuesday to ensure her election to the top post. Barring a surprise, she will become minority leader in January, when the new Congress convenes. The second- and third-ranking Democrats seem likely to hold their positions as well.
Republicans, meanwhile, are expected to keep Rep. John Boehner of Ohio as their leader, putting him in place to become speaker in January.
By quarreling among themselves and sticking with Pelosi, House Democrats are departing from the example set by Republicans, who quickly closed ranks around a new leader, Boehner, four years ago when they lost the majority.
Pelosi let her supporters and critics vent their emotions Tuesday at a four-hour closed meeting in the Capitol. She got an earful at times from colleagues who said a party must change leaders when it suffers the type of losses Democrats absorbed Nov. 2.
Rep. Allen Boyd of Florida was particularly pointed in his remarks, according to people present, saying Pelosi is the wrong person to represent Democrats as they try to rebuild. But others defended the San Francisco liberal, and even her toughest critics said she is likely to defeat Rep. Heath Shuler, a moderate from North Carolina.
Shuler told reporters he’s trying to make a point. After a whopping election defeat, he said, it’s not wise “to go back and put the exact same leadership into place.”
House Democrats appeared to iron out enough differences to prevent a revolt by black members who wanted Rep. Jim Clyburn, D-S.C., to claim the party’s second-ranking leadership post, called the whip.
Rep. Steny Hoyer of Maryland, a leader of moderate Democrats, will keep the No. 2 post, lawmakers said. Clyburn, the House’s highest-ranking black member, is in line to be elected to a new position called “assistant leader,” they said. Despite the new title, he will remain the House Democrats’ third-ranking leader.
President Barack Obama has invited congressional leaders of both parties to the White House, a postelection session expected this week but now put off until Nov. 30. The White House said Tuesday that Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell asked for the delay because of scheduling conflicts in organizing their caucuses.
Tuesday’s events offered scant evidence that Democrats, who often quarrel among themselves, will become more cohesive in the wake of their 60-seat House loss.
Shuler, for instance, showed no interest in mimicking the solidarity that House Republicans displayed during the past four years, when they voted unanimously or nearly unanimously against many high-profile initiatives by Democrats, including Obama.
“It’s very frustrating when I see everyone voting in bloc,” Shuler told reporters, because Americans are diverse and crave bipartisan solutions.
Republicans took a different tack after the 2006 election, which cost them the House majority they had held for 12 years. Within a day, then-Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., said he would step down as party leader in the next Congress.
House Republicans soon coalesced around Boehner, and he persuaded them to consistently oppose Democrats despite what some people saw as anti-GOP rebukes from voters in 2006 and 2008.
Pelosi, 70, has refused to go down with the ship. She blamed this month’s Democratic losses on the bad economy, not on policy decisions by her party. She said there was no reason for her to step aside.
Many House liberals support her. But a number of rank-and-file Democrats, including some left of center, are dismayed. They note that dozens of Republican House candidates ran campaigns linking their Democratic opponents to Pelosi, who was portrayed as a hardcore liberal hopelessly out of touch with middle American values.
“She definitely hurts,” said Rep. Gene Taylor, D-Miss., who lost his re-election bid this month. Citing former Republican House leader Tom DeLay, Taylor said in an interview: “When he realized he was a drag on leadership, he went away. Somehow the Democratic leadership didn’t learn that lesson.”
——
Associated Press writers Julie Hirschfeld Davis, Ben Evans and Donna Cassata contributed to this report.
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi arrives at the Kennedy Center for the Mark Twain Prize for humor in Washington, Tuesday, Nov. 9, 2010. Comedian Tina Fey was awarded the Mark Twain Prize. (AP Photo/Cliff Owen)(Credit: AP)
[Updated] House Democrats are gathering behind closed doors on Capitol Hill today to pick their leadership team for the next Congress — although “ratify” might be a more appropriate term.
Nancy Pelosi clearly has the votes to remain as the party’s leader, although it appears that Heath Shuler, a conservative Democrat from North Carolina, will go through the motions of formally opposing her. His move calls to mind the doomed bid that Charlie Rose, another conservative North Carolinian, launched against Dick Gephardt following the Democrats’ drubbing in the 1994 midterms. Gephardt, who had been the No. 2 Democrat, was in line to move up to the top slot after Speaker Tom Foley failed to win reelection in his Washington state district. Rose ended up attracting 58 votes to Gephardt’s 150; like Shuler now, his candidacy offered a way for Blue Dogs to tell their constituents they hadn’t voted for the party’s “liberal” leadership.
Gene Taylor, a Mississippi Blue Dog who backed Rose in ’94, said of Gephardt at the time: “If we give the keys to the same drivers, then we know the destination is going to be the same. We will lose more seats in ’96. There’s not a doubt in my mind.” Under Gephardt and his No. 2, Michigan’s David Bonior, Democrats actually picked up nine seats. (Taylor, incidentally, was among the Democrats who lost their seats on Nov. 2.)
Pelosi, of course, is in a slightly different position than Gephardt was, since she actually led the party through this fall’s election. Evidently, her desire to stay on has caused some hard feelings among some Democrats who lost their seats, Blue Dogs in particular. One of them, Florida’s Allen Boyd, used a separate caucus meeting on Tuesday to tell Pelosi that “You’re the main reason we lost!” according to National Journal.
It’s understandable why Boyd would think this. Before 2010, he’d won seven House elections in his Republican-friendly Panhandle district, and never before had he faced a political climate as hostile as this. Given the central role that Pelosi — or, more accurately, a caricature of Pelosi — played in the GOP’s ’10 messaging, it’s not hard to see why Boyd is now pointing his finger at her. The truth, though, is that any Democratic speaker would have been used as a weapon against Boyd and every other Democrat running for reelection in 2010. With his party in control of the White House and both chambers of Congress and with unemployment stuck near 10 percent, the ingredients were in place for Republicans to convince swing voters that every Democratic leader in Washington was governing recklessly and irresponsibly. Remember: Republican tried desperately to make their Pelosi caricature an issue in 2008 and even 2006 (when she was still minority leader). She was every bit the San Francisco liberal then that she is now, but it didn’t stop Boyd and plenty of other Blue Dogs from winning comfortably.
Boyd should know how this works. After all, he originally won his seat in 1996 — the first election after the GOP’s ’94 midterm sweep. And the first election after Gene Taylor and other Blue Dogs warned that sticking with Gephardt and Bonior as the party’s House leaders would guarantee further losses in the next campaign. By the Blue Dogs’ logic of ’94, a candidate like Boyd, running in a Republican-friendly district, should have had no chance. But voters were confident in the economy in ’96, creating a more favorable climate for Bill Clinton and the Democrats; thus, Boyd won, and went on to win six more times before this year.
The national political climate is the reason Allen Boyd lost this year — and that climate has everything to do with the economy. And maybe the economy would have been in better shape on Nov. 2 if, say, Blue Dogs like Allen Boyd hadn’t fought to decrease the size of last year’s stimulus.
Update: As expected, Pelosi had no trouble fending off Shuler’s token challenge, besting him by a 150-43 count — an eerily similar margin to Gephardt’s 158-50 victory over Rose back in 1994.
Steve Kornacki writes about politics for Salon. Reach him by email at SKornacki@salon.com and follow him on Twitter @SteveKornacki
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House Speaker-designate John Boehner, R-Ohio, speaks to the media after a meeting with newly elected Republican governors on Capitol Hill in Washington Wednesday, Dec. 1, 2010.(AP Photo/Alex Brandon)(Credit: Alex Brandon) 
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi arrives at the Kennedy Center for the Mark Twain Prize for humor in Washington, Tuesday, Nov. 9, 2010. Comedian Tina Fey was awarded the Mark Twain Prize. (AP Photo/Cliff Owen)(Credit: AP) 
