Lots happened in DC this week.  Here is a summary of some of the big things:

 

Death Tax: Yesterday, the House voted to permanently reduce the death tax. The vote was 269-156. I, like a majority of the House, would prefer to permanently eliminate the death tax. But for 4 years straight, the Senate has not been able to assemble the requisite 60 votes to do this. (by a 57-43 vote, Senators voted for permanent repeal this year, but that is not enough under the Senate’s strange rules) So, we need to do something that will garner 60 votes in the Senate. Hopefully, this is it. The bill we passed will raise the exemption from death taxes to $5 million per person, and lower the rate of tax to the capital gains rate of 15% above that. Estates larger than $25 million per person will pay a tax of twice the capital gains rate on the amount greater than $25 million. This exemption is high enough, and the rate low enough, to get the death tax out of the way for 99.7% of Americans so they can make decisions based on what is best for their families and not what is worst for the tax man.

 

I spoke on the floor in favor of this bill. Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi gave an impassioned appeal to vote "no" while quoting inaccurate figures and using tired class-warfare and “raise all taxes” arguments. Interestingly, nearly one quarter of the Democrats defied her leadership and voted aye along with nearly all the Republicans.

 

Now we will see what the Senate does with it.

 

Legislative Line Item Veto: Last night, the House also voted to approve the Legislative Line Item Veto (Ryan, R-WI) by a margin of 247-172. The 104th Congress passed a Presidential line item veto bill in 1996 which was later deemed unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. The bill passed yesterday is clearly constitutional because it requires that Congress confirm by a majority vote the spending reductions "lined out" by the president. This will be an important tool in the war against pork barrel spending, regardless of who the president is.

 

Now we will see what the Senate does with it.

 

Voting Rights Act: The Voting Rights Act dates back to the 1960’s when African Americans were regularly denied the right to vote in southern states. This week, an extension of the bill was withdrawn from a scheduled vote by the Speaker.

 

I think the bill should have been withdrawn. The bill would have failed to update the portions of the act that have created racially based gerrymandering based on wrongs committed in 1964.  It would have kept in place, until 2032, formulas used to evaluate local and state election rules based on turn out in the 1964, ’68, and ’72 elections rather than considering more recent elections. Furthermore, the bill would have continued multi-language ballot requirements in the face of the fact that the vast majority of Americans believe that the ability to speak, read and write English should be a requirement of citizenship.

 

The details are even worse than the summary. People who are self-described as speaking English well (as opposed to very well) are deemed to be unable to vote in English. Arguably, only William F. Buckley, Jr, John Kenneth Glabraith and George Will actually speak political English "very well". Furthermore, surnames will be used to determine if you should be encouraged (with your tax dollars) to vote in another language. So, if your last name is Ramirez, even if you are a fourth generation American, you will be told you should vote in Spanish.

 

I hope this bill is substantially revised, or I will not vote for it.

 

Iraq: The Washington Post on Thursday had a front page article on American soldiers being charged with murder in Iraq. The newspaper had absolutely NO REPORT in ANY section of the paper about the mutilating and beheading of the two American soldiers by Al Qaeda this week. I understand that we rightly have a different standard for our behavior than the terrorists have for their behavior. But the mainstream press continues to highlight Gitmo and Abu Ghraib and others to show how bad Americans are without ever pointing out the unspeakable crimes of our enemy.

 

And finally, a report just declassified this week showed that we found 500 separate cashes of chemical weapons in Iraq since 2003. These included degraded but still lethal mustard gas and sarin gas.

 

And there were no WMD’s there? What are these?

 

And no, I am not privy to the still classified parts of the report. And even if I were, I couldn’t tell you.