11-22-05,9:14am
Nov. 18—A week after backroom pressure failed to win enough votes to pass a $50 billion package of spending cuts in vital working family programs, U.S. House Republican leaders twisted just enough arms to eke out a 217–215 vote win after midnight Nov. 18.
But House leaders postponed until December the House vote on a $70 billion package of tax cuts largely for the wealthy, failing to pass the measure as planned before the Thanksgiving recess. The Senate approved its version of the tax cut bill in another after-midnight vote Nov. 18.
The Bush administration and Republican congressional leaders claim huge cuts in working family programs are needed to reduce the federal deficit and pay for Gulf Coast hurricane recovery. But the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy exceed the spending cuts and add to the federal deficit.
The House spending cut legislation—like a similar Senate spending cut measure—is aimed mainly at programs that benefit workers and the poor, including hurricane survivors. House Republican leaders spent Nov. 17 arm-twisting and searching for votes to pass the measure, according to news reports, and held the vote open for 25 minutes as they corralled the two-vote margin to pass the bill. Still, they were forced to compromise on some of the cruelest proposed budget cuts, removing, for example, a provision that would have taken free school lunches from children whose parents will lose food stamps.
The House bill would cut billions from Medicaid health services for poor children and long-term care patients, student loan programs, child support enforcement, foster care and Social Security disability payments and retains millions in food stamp cuts.
The vote followed an unusual defeat in the House of a $602 billion spending bill for education, health and Labor Department programs. Moderate Republicans joined Democrats in opposing the bill that would have cut education and health care funding.
Tax Cut Tricks
Meanwhile, Senate Republican leaders used what critics called “bait and switch” tactics to move a huge tax cut bill out of a committee, where it had been stalled, to the floor, where it passed 64–33 in the early hours of Nov. 18.
Last week, all nine Democrats on the Senate Finance Committee and one Republican had vowed to oppose a $70 billion tax cut package. When Republican leaders agreed Nov. 15 to remove provisions extending tax breaks that benefit only the wealthy—for capital gains and dividends—they won the votes to move the bill to the full Senate.
However, the House version of the tax cut bill maintains those tax breaks for the rich and most congressional observers expect them to be in the final version of the bill that will come out of a House-Senate conference to meld the two.
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) convinced conservative Republicans on the committee that removing the capital gains and dividend tax cuts from the bill to ensure its passage out of committee would not doom the prospects of including those cuts in the final version of the bill.
“If we pass a tax bill, it’s going to have extension of capital gains in it, or we won’t have a tax bill. And whether we have one in the Senate or not, the House is going to have one, so it’s going to be conferenceable. We’ll end up with it,” Grassley said.
