Tax Vote Issue Snags Budget Amendment

Senate support for a central element of the proposed balanced-budget amendment faded Tuesday amid signs that many lawmakers, including a number of Republicans, have serious misgivings about requiring a three-fifths vote in Congress to raise taxes.

Emerging from their weekly lunch, many Republican senators conceded that the provision could threaten Senate approval of the constitutional amendment. The requirement is a favorite of House Republicans.

“We’re not for it over here,” declared Sen. Pete V. Domenici (R-N.M.), chairman of the Senate Budget Committee.

While adoption of the amendment by both the House and Senate still seems likely, the Senate Judiciary Committee postponed its consideration of the measure by a week as several Democratic committee members asked for more time to study the issue.

Opponents of the provision, including some Republican moderates, contended that the three-fifths provision would make it inordinately difficult to adopt tax increases.

House consideration of the amendment also has been delayed, with a vote now more than a week away. But an early indicator of the fate of the provision could come today when the House Judiciary Committee takes it up.

In other business, the Senate debated but did not act on a proposal to force Congress to live under the same workplace, environmental and discrimination laws that it imposes on the private sector. A vote on the Congressional Accountability Act was scheduled for this evening.

In the House on Tuesday, Minority Leader Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.) urged the Ways and Means Committee to overhaul the complicated federal income tax system, suggesting that four-fifths of Americans could pay a flat tax of 10% to 11%.

“People are driven crazy by this tax code,” Gephardt said. “It’s a disaster. It just doesn’t work anymore.”

Gephardt said that the GOP’s “contract with America” fails to “address directly the core challenge that faces our society.” Nothing is more important to his constituents, Gephardt said, than improving their standards of living, which are “stuck in place or moving backwards.”

He said that his “flatter tax” would help middle-income Americans. He stopped short of endorsing a flat-tax proposal long advocated by Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-Tex.), which would set one tax rate for everyone.

Unlike the Republican version, which would also benefit upper-income taxpayers, the Gephardt proposal taxes Americans in the top 20% income level at a higher rate. It also would tax unearned income, such as capital gains, as ordinary income. Gephardt would not disclose the higher tax rate or other details of his proposal.

Also during the hearing, Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna Shalala and congressional Democrats criticized the GOP welfare reform plan, charging that it would hurt “innocent children.” Shalala had condemned the GOP proposal for advocating orphanages as a solution for children whose families are denied welfare.

But Rep. Bill Archer (R-Tex.), Ways and Means Committee chairman, turned the tables on Shalala, forcing her to admit that the President’s welfare reform plan also could cause states to put some children into orphanages.

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