Split Develops Among House Republicans

Something unusual has begun to happen in Congress.

The House of Representatives has started to look like an American legislative institution instead like the British House of Commons, where strict party discipline is the norm.

After the 1994 elections, the Republican Party, riding to control of the House, imposed party discipline on its members to an almost unprecedented extent.

Historically both parties had hardly been highly disciplined.  Dissenters in each group would readily join with the majority in the other party to pass legislation.

In the 1930s and 40s, President Franklin D. Roosevelt had to try to peel off Southern Democrats from their informal alliance with Republicans to get them to support him and his Democratic policies.

And over the years moderate Republicans would occasionally line up with the Democrats.

That was the normal rule and how a lot of bipartisan bills were passed.

But House Speaker Newt Gingrich convinced all GOP members of the House to vote as a majority of the Republicans members directed.

In true parliamentary fashion, Gingrich even resigned office after his party lost a few seats in the 1998 elections.  Dennis Hastert, his successor as Speaker, said that it was his job to allow only bills favored by the GOP to pass.

This new discipline hit its peak when House Republicans voted to impeach Democratic President Bill Clinton.

Under the parliamentary system, the legislature can dump the government by subjecting it to defeat on a so-called “vote of confidence.”

While Congress has no such power, the Clinton impeachment could easily be seen as a vote of no confidence.   The Senate, lacking such total discipline, failed to go along with the House.

In 2010, the Republicans surged nationally, capitalizing on voter discontent with the slow pace of economy recovery.

The GOP gains were largely made by so-called “Tea Party” Republicans, who were committed to reducing the size of government and public spending.

The Tea Party wave was so strong that its adherents toppled some senior GOP officeholders in party primaries.

Following the 2010 elections, the Republican-controlled House passed Tea Party bills that had no hope of gaining Senate approval.  But they staked out a clear party position.

It seemed like Tea Party Republicans could take over the party in many states and in Congress after the 2012 elections. They believed that with economic recovery progressing slowly, Democrat Barack Obama and his supporters in Congress would suffer defeat.

Mitt Romney, the party’s presidential candidate, was forced to transform himself from a moderate into a conservative.

Instead of winning a sweeping victory, Republicans saw Obama re-elected and the Democrats stronger in both the House and Senate.

Although election post-mortems tend to be unduly alarmist about the future of the losers, Republicans were quick to draw lessons from the results.

They had lost the rapidly growing Latino vote and a majority of women voters.  If the trend continued, the party could spend a long time as a minority.

When Congress reconvened last month, parliamentary style discipline was clearly waning.   

Many Republicans, reading the party’s low poll standings, seemed to recognize that voters wanted results more than ideological purity.

The New York Times selected three recent votes to show the increased influence of House Democrats.  But they also showed a remarkable change: the split among House Republicans.

Speaker John Boehner has led his troops into compromises that the Tea Party would not make.

In the vote to avoid the fiscal cliff, about a third of the GOP went along the vast majority of Democrats.  (The Democrats are incapable of complete discipline, so they had some defectors.)

And the GOP itself proposed a three-month extension in the debt ceiling battle, though Republicans could not have passed it without some Democratic votes.

These votes represented the Republicans’ recognition that they would get the blame and possibly pay a price at election time, if they threw the country into a financial crisis undermining economic recovery.

On aid for Hurricane Sandy victims, a few Republicans supplied votes needed for a majority.

A relative but essential handful recognized that it was unfair to assist disaster victims in Republican areas but block it for the Northeast.

And in the wake of the strong Latino support of the Democrats, some Republicans were ready to join their opponents to pass new legislation to deal with illegal or undocumented immigrants.

Such unusual cooperation may mark the end of the GOP experiment with parliamentary style government.

This year should show if strict party discipline has finally given way to the demands of practical politics.

Tax reform could help solve fiscal crisis

This could be the year for some real tax reform.

The federal government needs to complete its reduction of the federal debt by a targeted $4 trillion over ten years.  Many state governments, which must have balanced budgets, face stubborn deficits.

Tax reform should be part of the solution.

Pure tax reform is meant to be “revenue neutral,” not changing the amount of money government takes in, but making the tax system fairer for taxpayers.

We are not talking about pure tax reform this year.  President Obama wants the wealthy to pay their “fair share” and that means they should pay more.  Meanwhile, there will likely be no more tax cuts for anybody else.

In dealing with the federal debt, the President and Congress have already saved about $2.5 trillion in spending cuts and tax rate increases on high income people, especially those with taxable revenues above $450,000.

More is needed, probably in both spending cuts and tax increases.

The added federal tax money probably won’t come from further rate increases or even by lowering the definition of who is rich.  It will come from closing tax loopholes.

A loophole excludes certain income from being subject to tax.

All loopholes have been created by law with the specific intent of favoring some activity like giving to charity, buying a home or making certain investments.

Of course, loopholes also favor the people, often the most wealthy, who can take advantage of them. 

Some tax breaks come right off the top, even the tax return reveals if a taxpayer passes the $450,000 level.  For example, GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s taxes showed that he received almost $2 million a year that simply did not count as part of his taxable income.

In the new Washington struggles to cut the debt, the Republicans want no more rate increases. If Obama agrees, as it looks like he might, the focus will be on loopholes, yielding a relatively small amount of revenue.

While closing loopholes in addition to spending cuts can help make it look like the $4 trillion goal has been reached, that will be something of an illusion.  Accountants for the rich and famous are already at work relabeling some investment income so it can slip through one loophole just as another is closed.

All that goes to show is that the battle against loopholes is endless and less likely to produce a real debt reduction than would an increase in rates.

It’s likely that everybody in Washington knows that, but is willing to give a somewhat false impression about their success in cutting the national debt.

Many states base their income tax at least partly on the federal system, so whatever happens in Congress will filter through to their state taxes.

But states will probably have to do more, because they cannot hide their debt behind more borrowing as easily as the federal government.  Many need voter approval for taking on more debt.

In a recent statewide referendum, California voters boldly decided to support a tax increase.  That stunned pundits who thought people would never agree to higher taxes.

As a result, Gov. Jerry Brown announced that the state’s budget shortfalls would end, restoring the state to fiscal health.  That’s only possible if the state stays on the straight and narrow.

In Maine, Gov. Paul LePage has reasonably advocated reducing the top income tax rate, among the highest in the country.  Democrats oppose any such rate cut for the rich.

The state’s financial problems cannot be solved by slight decreases or increases in the top tax rate, though such changes might promote greater tax fairness.

If the only fiscal policy is to cut state spending, as LePage advocates, most of the burden will shift to the property tax.   That’s decidedly unpopular.

And there is evidence that property taxes affect real estate sales, important as Maine develops as a retirement and vacation home haven.

The state needs more tax revenues and the obvious sources are increases in the sales tax and the meals and lodging tax.  And, as in other states, fewer items should be exempt from the sales tax.

Lower income people would be sheltered from a sales tax increase by the current exemptions established with them in mind.

Opponents say that such increases would cause sales to fall, and tourists to go elsewhere.  But there is no evidence that’s true. 

During a state budget crisis in the 1990s, Maine temporarily increased the sales tax.  Now might be the time to try it again.

Did Maine Let a Genie Out of the Bottle?

Maine is getting a lot of unexpected, national political attention these days. 

It has to do with how the state votes for the President and Vice President of the United States.

Each state gets a number of votes equal to the total of its senators and representatives. These are votes in the Electoral College, and Maine gets four.

So when you vote for president, you are voting for people whose names are unknown to you, the state’s members of the Electoral College.

The idea behind the Electoral College is that the presidential election is a collection of state elections, reflecting the American federal system.

Each state decides how its electors are chosen.  Throughout American history, all electoral votes cast by each state traditionally went to the winner of the state’s popular vote.

But Maine single-handedly changed that.

In 1985, Maine decided to select its four electors in a different way.  Two are chosen by the statewide popular vote, like the state’s U.S. senators, and two are be chosen based on the vote in each of the two congressional districts, like U.S. representatives.

The result could be that all four electoral votes still go to one presidential candidate, but it would also be possible for a three-to-one split, if a candidate won in one house district.  Since the new law was adopted, Maine’s vote has not been split.

Beginning with the 1992 elections, Nebraska became the second state to adopt this approach.  In 2008, Barack Obama picked up one of the state’s five electoral votes, and John McCain got the other four.

Allowing some voting by congressional district can give a minority a chance to have a voice in the state’s choice, which it does not have in a winner-take-all election. 

Under what is now called the “Maine-Nebraska system,” there are no longer 50 statewide elections (plus three votes for the District of Columbia), apparently contrary to the intent of the framers of the Constitution.

Though the new system has not been tested in court, it may well be constitutional, representing another case where the Constitution is changed from the original intent.

In last year’s president election, Democrat Obama beat Republican Mitt Romney by about five million votes and won overwhelmingly by 332-206 in the Electoral College vote. 

But, if elections were held across the country on the Maine-Nebraska system, Romney would have won a narrow victory in the Electoral College.

Right now, the Republicans control a majority of state legislatures and have been able to design congressional districts to favor their party.  According to some analysts, their control has given the GOP an extra two percent advantage over what they would have with politically neutral districts.

GOP districting is linked to the Republicans push for states to adopt the “Maine-Nebraska system.”

To see how this would work in practice, let’s look at Pennsylvania.  Obama carried the state by 284,000 votes, while Republicans captured 13 of the 18 congressional seats.  While winning an overwhelming majority of the House seats, the GOP got fewer votes than the Democrats.

Under the Maine-Nebraska system, it is likely that Obama would have received 7 electoral votes (two statewide plus five in districts) instead of all 20.

The problem for the Republicans is that the Democratic candidates get all of the electoral votes in large states like California and New York.  Using the Maine-Nebraska system, the GOP would get a good share of the presidential vote, even in states they did not carry.

A few years ago, after Al Gore won the 2000 popular vote but lost the Electoral College vote, some Democrats pushed for each state to allocate its electoral vote in line with the national popular vote.  In effect, that would end the federal election of the president.

People in high-population states would be making the decision for small states, like Maine.

That idea has faded, but it reflects the same concept as changing to the Maine-Nebraska system:  when you lose an election, don’t change your policies, change the rules of the game.

These proposals are designed to modify the Constitution by stealth instead of a formal amendment. 

The Constitution embodied the concept of a federation of states that is worth safeguarding.  Going to the use of the national popular vote or the Maine-Nebraska system undermines the federal system where states retain some sovereignty.

When states are weakened even in one respect, the entire federal system is watered down.

Perhaps Maine was unaware of the genie it let out of the bottle in 1985.  If it now went back to a statewide election for president, it could send a message to the nation and protect federalism.