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Thursday, September 27, 2007
Is PAYGO Sinking the SCHIP?
Donny Shaw at the invaluable OpenCongress.org had an interesting interpretation of the SCHIP vote in the House:
When the Democrats took over Congress in January, they passed new, hardcore budgeting rules known as PAYGO that require them to account for any spending increase by creating an equal increase in revenue elsewhere. With SCHIP, their fiscal heroism proved bittersweet; the revenue increase proposal they agreed upon ended up costing congressional Democrats the critical Republican votes they needed to get their proposal enacted.
Under the the proposal, the expansion would be funded entirely by a 61-cent per pack increase in the tobacco tax. The tobacco industry didn't like this plan and they showed it by flexing their lobbying muscles with representatives from the tobacco states (North Carolina, Kentucky, Georgia, South Carolina, Virginia, and Tennessee). In the end, only one of the 33 Republican tobacco-state representatives voted for the bill. That's a support rate of only 3 percent, significantly lower than overall House Republican support rate, which was 22 percent. With about 15 other "nay"-voting representatives who could be considered persuadable "aye" votes -- the 6 Democrats who opposed it, the 1 who voted "present," and the 8 who didn't vote -- even a modest improvement in the rate of tobacco-state-republican support could have made all the difference with this bill.
That's certainly possible. But an even more plausible explanation for the regionally divided vote is the old red state-blue state dyanamic. Red-state Republicans are generally more conservative than their blue-state counterparts, who also represent more vulnerable districts. If you just look at red-state Republicans, as opposed to tobacco state Republicans, I imagine the voting ratio would be pretty similar. That's probably the more obvious explanation, but that doesn't mean it's less true.
Plus, only three of the 8 Democrats who voted against the expansion came from tobacco states. And some Democrats from tobacco states voted for the bill, including Rep. Health Shuler (D-NC) and Jim Cooper (D-TN).
And let's accept that the tobacco tax swung some votes. But what would the votes have looked like if a) it hadn't been paid for or b) it was paid for with a different tax increase or spending cut? Recall that the tobacco tax was included at the initial suggestion of Sen. Gordon Smith (R-OR) as pay-for that'd be acceptable to moderate Republicans.
I wouldn't rule out Shaw's explanation, but more than a vote count is necessary to make it compelling.
Posted by Matt Lewis
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