Yesterday, as you probably know if you have read David Waldman's FP this morning, the senate took two votes on payroll tax bills. One a Democrat proposal and one a Republican proposal, with both failing to reach the 60 vote threshold of the painless filibuster as is so often the case in the Senate.
The fact that both these bills failed is not news, they were anticipated to fail. What is news though is the differences in the margins of failure caused by party defections and what that might mean as the Senate tries to find some way of getting a Payroll tax bill though. Join me after the jump /\ for some dissection of these votes. I promise it will be less gross than that frog dissection you did in high school.
Bill No. 1 - Reid (D-Nev.) - Democrat Bill: Vote - 51Y to 49N (60 votes needed to pass):
In a nut shell, this bill both extended and increased the payroll tax cut for workers and would have put (on average) $1500 in middle class pockets next year. It also expanded the cuts to small businesses to help spur hiring. Its "pay fors" came from a small surtax on earnings over $1 million.
The lone defection on the Republican side was Sue Collins (R-Me) who voted "YES". Not too surprising because she is up for re-election in 2012 in a rural State with few millionaires and a lot of middle class voters. She probably did the political calculus and figured she couldn't afford voting with her caucus on this one because there was too much political risk for her (she's probably right about that).
There were two defections on the Democrat side, Tester (D-Mt) and Manchin (D-WV) who both voted "NO". What's up with that? These are rural sparsely populated States where you can likely count the number of millionaires in each State on one hand. In fact Tester and Manchin probably know all of them personally, which might explain their votes.
Lastly, "Big Ben" Nelson (D-Ne), who rarely passes up an opportunity to screw his own party when it comes to votes effecting his millionaire campaign contributors, actually voted "YES" with Democrats on this one. I'm Shocked! He must have been off his meds. yesterday, that's the only explanation I can think of.
Bill No. 2 - Heller (R-Nev.) - "Republican Bill": Vote - 28Y to 70N (60 votes needed to pass):
The "Cliff Notes" version of this bill is that it simply extended the current payroll tax cut for one year (no increase in the cut and no expansion to small business), with its "pay for" mainly coming from cutting the federal work force and extending the pay freeze on federal workers who are mainly in the middle and lower income brackets. It also had some crazy stuff in it like banning millionaires from receiving SNAP benefits (i.e. Food Stamps) which is of course a $0 "pay for". But leave it to Republicans to never pass up a chance to cut benefits no matter how wacky the cuts might seem.
On this bill there were no Democrat defections, the entire caucus voted "NO", a rarity these days.
However, on the other side of the aisle, 26 Republicans voted "NO" with the Democrats, a massive defection by any standard. That's why I put "Republican Bill" in quotes above. Is it really a Republican Bill when over half of the caucus doesn't support it? What was the Republican leadership thinking in bringing this to the floor? Rule #1 of Party leadership in congress is that you never bring a bill to the floor that does not have substantial majority of support within your own caucus. It just makes you look silly. I have seen Boehner make these type blunders in the House, but never McConnell and never on this scale. He has exposed the divide within the Republican caucus for all to see, and if the Dems. are smart they will exploit it.
Anyway, in going forward it is obvious that there is far more support in the Senate for something like the Democrat Payroll Tax Bill than there is for something like the Republican Payroll Tax bill, based on the huge difference in the margins of yesterday's votes. That should be a sign to Senate Dems. that they should be able to get payroll tax legislation through the Senate by tweeking their bill, and they don't need to cave to the Republican position to pass a payroll tax cut. Hopefully, Reid sees this and will only make minor changes to the Dem. bill to peal off a few Republicans as the end of the year deadline approaches increasing the pressure to pass something. There is no need to go anywhere near the type of bill Heller proposed yesterday which has less than half of the Republican Caucuses' support.