Sanders Filibusters Tweaked Tax Bill

  • Share
  • Read Later

At 10:25 a.m. this morning, Sen. Bernie Sanders, the independent from Vermont, began a lengthy speech on the Senate floor to block President Obama’s $858 billion tax bill. “You can call what I am doing today whatever you want, you it call it a filibuster, you can call it a very long speech,” Sanders said. “I’m not here to set any great records or to make a spectacle. I am simply here today to take as long as I can to explain to the American people the fact that we have got to do a lot better than this agreement provides.” At this point, it’s a full-blown filibuster. Colloquys aside, he’s now pushing four hours.

It’s nice to see a lawmaker stand up for his convictions, but Sanders has a steep uphill climb. As I wrote on Tuesday, some of the Senate Democrats signaling strong opposition to the framework hammered out by the White House and Congressional Republicans likely did so to boost their leverage as they haggled for deal sweeteners. Now those sweeteners have arrived. On Thursday night the package was reworked to extend renewable-energy provisions from the stimulus, including an ethanol tax break of 45 cents-per-gallon and a popular grant program that gives companies working on solar, wind, geothermal and other renewable-energy projects a federal cash credit of up to 30%. The ethanol break could help entice wavering farm-state Democrats, while more than a dozen Democratic senators had sought the extension of the cash grants. (Check out our colleague Michael Grunwald’s take on why the latter is good, the former not so much.) Harry Reid has announced his support, and while conservatives from the DeMint wing could defect because of its impact on the swelling federal deficit, it seems set to sail through Monday’s scheduled 3 p.m. cloture vote.

Its path through the House is a little trickier and just as raucous. In a non-binding voice vote yesterday House Democrats resolved not to bring the bill to the floor in its current version. A letter circulated by Rep. Peter Welch of Vermont, which assailed the bill for being “fiscally irresponsible” and “grossly unfair” to the middle class, attracted 53 signatures. “The heart of the concern from Democrats is the billions of dollars in debt that are going to pay for tax cuts for very wealthy Americans,” Welch told TIME. “Will it create new jobs? Very few. Will it create debt? Yes, big time. We can’t afford to be this reckless with a credit card. If we’re going to borrow money, it should be so that at the end of the day we have a mile of broadband, a mile of high-speed rail, the retrofitting of public buildings to make them more energy efficient. Then, at least, generations of Americans will share the benefits just as they’ll share the burden of paying for them.”

Recent tweaks, however, could prove more palatable to some of his fellow Democrats. And with House Republican leaders backing the measure, President Obama expects the bill to pass the lower chamber. “Here’s what I’m confident about, that nobody — Democrat or Republican — wants to see people’s paychecks smaller on Jan. 1 because Congress didn’t act,” Obama said during an interview with NPR’s Steve Inskeep. Having stuck his neck out this far, he’d better be right.