Should Tax Cuts Be Paid For?

GOP Moderates Keep Splitting on Issue and Losing

On March 31, with their eyes on record budget deficits, 11 Republican moderates in the House penned a letter to their leadership, demanding that any congressional budget resolution this year require that future tax cuts be offset by spending reductions or tax hikes.

Yet yesterday, four of the signatories -- Amo Houghton (N.Y.), Mark S. Kirk (Ill.), Thomas E. Petri (Wis.) and Todd R. Platts (Pa.) -- bowed to their leaders' demands and voted against that position. On the 207 to 211 tally, those four votes effectively scuttled the motion.

The congressional standoff over the 2005 budget has highlighted the difference between the handful of Republican moderates in the House and those in the Senate. Both groups have taken public stands for tighter budget rules. Both have professed strong concern for a budget deficit likely to top $400 billion this year. But where a few GOP senators have stood their ground, many of their House counterparts have given in.

"As a Republican moderate, it's difficult to decide when the best time is to make your move," Kirk explained. "In the end, we also have to make sure the House leadership is supportive of the direction we're going. To try to move legislation without their support will be an unsuccessful strategy."

The House and Senate passed broad 2005 blueprints for spending and tax cuts nearly two months ago, hoping to come to a quick budget agreement. That way, Congress's 13 annual spending bills could be completed before the fall campaigns heat up. Instead, negotiations have been gridlocked over one issue: paying for tax cuts.

Four Republican senators -- Olympia J. Snowe (Maine), Susan Collins (Maine), John McCain (Ariz.) and Lincoln D. Chafee (R.I.) -- joined Democrats to approve a bill that would reinstate strict "pay as you go" rules that governed spending and tax cuts in the 1990s but have since lapsed.

The House resolution would demand offsetting spending cuts only for entitlement spending increases, leaving the chamber free to continue cutting taxes without paying for them.

On March 30, House Democrats offered a nonbinding motion to tell negotiators to accept the Senate position. At one point during the vote, the resolution held a 212 to 206 advantage, but GOP leaders held open a five-minute vote for 28 minutes while they worked to switch votes. Finally, the vote was gaveled shut at 209 to 209, killing the motion on a tie. Platts and Kirk helped defeat it.

Last week, the Democrats tried again -- and again they failed. Yesterday was the third try. Again, passage seemed possible when 12 Republicans voted for the measure, but again, four Republicans changed their votes to bring the motion down.

Centrist Democrats, who have repeatedly seen their efforts at compromise fall short, derisively joked that a House Republican moderate is someone who throws a 10-foot rope to a drowning man 20 feet offshore. Rep. Michael N. Castle (R-Del.), president of the moderate Republican Main Street Partnership, did not dispute the characterization.

"Frankly, it bothers me, too," he said. ". . . I've made it clear we've got to win some votes if we take a stand."

Meanwhile, the tax cuts have kept coming. While budget negotiations have plodded on, the House has passed four tax cuts totaling $510 billion over 10 years.

Moderates who opposed the pay-as-you-go resolutions defended their votes, even as they stood by their letter supporting the concept. Petri spokesman Nielson Wright noted that the motions were not binding. House negotiators probably would have ignored them anyway.

"Having signed the letter, [Petri] made his point," Wright said, "but he has to pick and choose his fights and not go and stick his finger in the eye of the leadership at every occasion."