House Democrats Sell Out And Back GOP Tax Extenders Bill-- So Why Should Anyone Vote For A Democrat (Other Than Gays)?

Our coverage of the tax extenders bill the lame duck session is dealing with-- basically more tax breaks for the wealthy-- have all been about the Senate and how the Democratic majority there can still maneuver. Wednesday, though, it was the Republican-controlled House that went first. H.R. 5771 is euphemistically called Tax Increase Prevention Act of 2014 but it increase taxes on poor people and green energy companies and is overly generous to corporate hogs who don't pay their fair share of taxes. House Ways and Means Committee chair Dave Camp (R-MI) is the sponsor and there was never any doubt of the outcome in the House.

The first vote, at 3pm, was enabling legislation to allow a vote on the bill itself. Only 3 Republicans bucked the GOP leadership to vote against it: libertarian leaners Walter Jones (R-NC) and Tom Massey (R-KY) and lunatic domestic terrorist Steve Stockman (R-TX). Worse than not having enough Republicans willing to stand up for working people and stop the bill-- which came as no surprise-- is that 6 of the worst New Dem sell-outs (plus a miserable Blue Dog straggler) crossed the aisle in the other direction and backed the bill. Clearly these are going to be 7 of the most useless Democrats in Congress this session:

• Ron Barber (New Dem-AZ)
• John Delaney (New Dem-MD)
• James Himes (New Dem-CT)
• Dan Lipinski (Blue Dog-IL)
• Mike McIntyre (New Dem-NC)
• Patrick Murphy (New Dem-FL)
• Kyrsten Sinema (new Dem-AZ)

Two and a half-hours later Jones and another libertarian-oriented Member, Jimmy Duncan (R-TN) voted with the Democrats on their Motion to Recommit, which was defeated 197-223. In the end, though, just a handful of progressives (17) , 2 Blue Dogs and a transactional guy from Indiana who must have had something cooking for himself, plus 26 anti-Establishment Republicans voted against the final bill, which passed 378-46. The only Democrats with the guts to vote NO were:

• Xavier Becerra (D-CA)
• Earl Blumenauer (D-OR)
• Yvette Clarke (D-NY)
• Lacy Clay (D-MO)
• Jim Cooper (Blue Dog-TN)
• Keith Ellison (D-MN)
• Raul Grijalva (D-AZ)
• Alcee Hastings (D-FL)
• Barbara Lee (D-CA)
• John Lewis (D-GA)
• Grace Napolitano (D-CA)
• Beto O'Rourke (D-TX)
• Frank Pallone (D-NJ)
• Bill Pascrell (D-NJ)
• Mark Pocan (D-WI)
• Jared Polis (D-CO)
• Jan Schakowsky (D-IL)
• Mike Thompson (Blue Dog-CA)
• Pete Visclosky (D-IN)
• Peter Welch (D-VT)

All that Democratic support in the House makes it more difficult for any grouping of principled Democrats in the Senate to kill this travesty. Some say the final bill wasn't "that bad." Well it wasn't as bad as the Republicans were trying to make it, but it was plenty bad. Here's how Citizens for Tax Justice characterized what they passed:

After President Barack Obama’s veto threat last week ended discussion of a $450 billion package of tax breaks mostly benefiting businesses, the House of Representatives approved a smaller bill, H.R. 5771, that would extend most of the tax cuts for one year at a cost of $42 billion. While the President deserves credit for stopping a much bigger corporate giveaway, even the $42 billion bill is an absurd waste of money from a Congress that has been unable to find a way to fund basic public investments like highways and bridges.

Here are just a few of the problems with H.R. 5771:

• Most of the tax breaks fail to achieve any desirable policy goals. For example, they include bonus depreciation breaks for investments in equipment that the Congressional Research Service have found to be a “relatively ineffective tool for stimulating the economy, a tax credit for research defined so loosely that it includes the work soft drink companies put into developing new flavors, and a tax break that allows General Electric to do financial business offshore without paying U.S. taxes on the profits.

• The tax breaks cannot possibly be effective in encouraging businesses to do anything because they are almost entirely retroactive. The tax breaks actually expired at the end of 2013 and this bill will extend them (almost entirely retroactively) through 2014. These tax provisions are supposedly justified as incentives for companies to do things Congress thinks are desirable, like investing in equipment or research, but that justification makes no sense when tax breaks are provided to businesses for things they have done in the past.

• The bill increases the deficit by $42 billion to provide tax breaks that mostly benefit businesses, even after members of Congress have refused to enact any measure that helps working people unless the costs are offset. The measures that Congress refused to enact without offsets include everything from creating jobs by funding highway projects to extending emergency unemployment benefits.