Kagen Votes With Pelosi 96% of the Time

Jeff at the Appleton Blog was wondering about the similarities in voting records between our own Steve Kagen and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Open Congress.org has a head to head vote comparison tool that makes it easy to find such information. According to Open Congress

Steve Kagen and Nancy Pelosi have voted together 215 times on roll call votes since January, 2007 in votes where neither abstained, representing a voting similarity of 96%.

More details at the link, including a side by side on all roll call votes.

(Yet Another) Jobs Bill

The major news out of Washington today was the announcement of President Obama's new jobs proposal. From Slate:

Obama promoted a three-pronged approach to job creation, emphasizing small-business tax cuts, infrastructure investment, and clean-energy spending. The plan will likely be packaged as a single piece of legislation.

By my count this is at least the third "jobs" bill of the year, but you don't have to take my word for it.

Here's House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on 2/13/09 describing HR 1 the stimulus bill:

After all the debate, this legislation can be summed up in one word: Jobs.

Here's Pelosi on 6/26/09, this time discussing Cap & Trade:

There are four words that can describe this bill: jobs, jobs, jobs, and jobs.

In the space of four months Pelosi was able to quadruple the number of times she said "jobs" in discussing her latest legislative boondoggle. Unfortunately, this didn't create any, you know, actual jobs.

So the stimulus was a jobs bill, cap & trade was a jobs bill, and now we will add to this Obama's latest jobs bill. While bills about jobs have flourished in Washington, jobs in America have continued to wither.

Hey! I don't make over $250K

Speaker Pelosi has suggested that the enactment of a Value Added Tax (VAT) be considered. From The Hill:

A new value-added tax (VAT) is "on the table" to help the U.S. address its fiscal liabilities, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Monday night.

Pelosi, appearing on PBS's "The Charlie Rose Show" asserted that "it's fair to look at" the VAT as part of an overhaul of the nation's tax code.

"I would say, Put everything on the table and subject it to the scrutiny that it deserves," Pelosi told Rose when asked if the VAT has any appeal to her.

The VAT is a tax on manufacturers at each stage of production on the amount of value an additional producer adds to a product.

Now I'm not one of these absolute anti-tax zealots. I believe there are legitimate functions of government at many different levels and carrying out those functions require revenue. I do believe, though, that the revenue ought to be generated in the most open and forthright manner; with full acknowledgement by our elected officials that what they are doing is confiscating money for the purpose of providing government services. Pelosi seems to agree, based on her, "scrutiny it deserves," comment.

Not so fast. The Hill ends its report with this:

The Speaker also emphasized that any reworking of the tax code would not result in an increase in taxes on middle-class Americans.

To think that a tax on manufacturers at each stage of production wouldn't ultimately be passed on to consumers, including middle-class Americans, strains credulity to the breaking point.

We may not call it a tax, which would allow President Obama to live up to his campaign promise not to increase taxes on those making less than 250 thousand dollars a year, but people will see increased costs of goods nonetheless.

This inability to trace out the consequences of legislation is an epidemic among our lawmakers and is one of the major reasons for our chronic crises, which inevitably lead to another round of legislative "fixes".

In the case of a VAT, the consequences seem so obvious that for someone of Pelosi's stature not to recognize them is frightening.

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For a WI version of stealth taxation, see Dad29 on Doyle's Deceptions.