If the Senate wants higher taxes, why not vote on it?
As the president signed the debt deal bill on Tuesday, Democrats continued to lament the fact that it didn’t include any new taxes.
Before the Senate vote on the proposal, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said any future deal must include "new revenue," which means higher taxes.
He was echoing Rep. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, the top Democrat on the House Budget Committee. "It has to be done in a balanced fashion," Rep. Van Hollen said. "It has to include closing these corporate tax loopholes for special interests and looking at other revenue sources from the very top income earners."
Meantime, President Obama continued to complain that the wealthy somehow aren’t paying their "fair share" and that higher taxes loom for the rich.
All this is rather odd.
Sen. Reid enjoys a 51-47 majority in the upper chamber. The two remaining "independents" usually vote with the Democrats. If Mr. Obama seeks higher taxes on the rich — and it appears Sen. Reid and many of his cohorts embrace that position — why haven’t Senate Democrats simply put the specifics into bill form and brought it to committee and eventually the floor?
Then again, this Senate hasn’t passed a budget in more than two years, pushing three. In part, that’s due to the fact that any honest Democratic budget — spend, spend on everything but defense, tax anything that moves — might be an albatross at a time when the American people are demanding fiscal restraint and the country remains mired in an economic morass.
And given that the Democrats must defend twice as many Senate seats as Republicans in the 2012 election, including many in swing states, perhaps it’s too much to ask that any plan to raise taxes — even on just the rich, Big Oil or whoever — be brought up in bill form this year or next.
