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How lawmakers voted will show up next election, but without context

by Frank Cagle

We just had another election in which any number of legislators and congressmen were accused of voting to raise taxes or casting some other nefarious vote to screw the people.

Back when I used to answer the phone on the News Sentinel metro desk, one of the more frequent suggestions I got from readers was a weekly feature recording the votes of legislators and congressmen. It seems such a simple request. We tried it on occasion, at least with selected congressional votes.

But if there is anything more misleading, wrong and impossible to report it is how legislators and congressman voted. Let’s pretend you are a legislator. You decide how to vote on each of these issues:

• Republicans control the House. They have a defense appropriations bill that has eight decent weapons programs and expenditures for body armor for the troops and new base housing for enlisted men. But it also contains two lousy weapons programs that don’t work and the Pentagon says they don’t need. The two programs cost $50 billion. The Democrats have an alternative bill that doesn’t include the two programs. So you vote against the Republican bill and you vote for the Democrat bill. The Democrat bill doesn’t get out of committee, the Republican bill passes. In the next election your Republican opponent runs an ad that says you voted against body armor for the troops, housing for the troops and for much needed weapons programs. The ad is correct.

• You are in the state Legislature. No local government can do much without permission from the Legislature. If county commissioners want to raise the motel tax on the Holiday Inn out on the Interstate, they have to get permission from the Legislature. Every year the Legislature has dozens of bills allowing local governments to hold referenda or to allow local governments to pass some fee increase or tax increase for a local purpose. Legislative courtesy usually means you vote to allow the local government to make the decision. You did not levy the tax, and it only affects one of 95 counties. In the next election your opponent runs an ad that says you voted to raise taxes 53 times during your last two terms. The ad is correct. If every legislator decides not to vote for local bills, then local governments will be paralyzed. During his first term Gov. Don Sundquist was so paranoid about tax increases that he refused to sign local tax bills.

• You are in a state House committee. You vote for an education reform bill that will result in $1 billion in new education money for local school districts. It passes the House and goes to the Senate. It comes out of conference committee and comes back for an up or down vote. Now it includes a provision to appoint school superintendents. Your district is adamantly opposed. Do you vote for the $1 billion in new education funding? If so, your opponent in the next election will say you took away the right to vote. Or, perhaps it includes a voucher program. You oppose vouchers and have promised your local teachers you won’t vote for such a thing. So you vote against the bill. In the next election your opponent tells teachers you voted against giving them a pay-raise.

• You are a state legislator. There is an income-tax bill up for a vote. You are virulently anti-income tax. If a bill gets a floor vote and loses, it is dead for the session. The proponents of the income tax discover they don’t have the votes. They make a motion to table the bill. You vote against tabling because if it comes to a vote, it loses and you have won. But if you vote not to table you are voting to put the income tax up for a vote. In the next election you just voted for the income tax.

• There are thousands of votes. Procedural votes often require voting for something in order to kill it. Most bills are a mixture of items, omnibus spending bills in particular. You may decide that 99 of 100 items in a bill are things you support. You vote for it. The one thing you hated will come back to haunt you in an election.

It would take an entire Sunday newspaper to record the ins and outs of all the votes taken by all the legislators during a typical week of the Legislature. Then there’s Congress. There are a hundred variations on these examples. Most campaign commercials about voting records are true—but are also deceitful and misleading.

Frank Cagle is a political analyst and the host of Sound Off on WIVK FM107.7, WNOX AM990, FM99.1 and FM99.3 each Sunday 8-9:30 a.m. The program is pre-empted this week by Sports Sound Off, coverage of the Vols versus Notre Dame football game.

November 4, 2004 • Vol. 14, No. 45 © 2004 Metro Pulse