Governing is hard. Politics is fun.
Governing is what political parties have to do when they have a majority, and therefore the responsibility to govern. The bigger the majority, the greater the responsibility.
Politics is what political parties can play when they are in the minority. The smaller the minority, the less responsible they have to be.
All of which was on display last week at the Vermont House of Representatives, where the Democrats with their big majority had some trouble passing a bill and the Republicans with their small minority had great fun ridiculing and threatening the Democrats.
The bill is H.439, which would increase the tax on home heating fuel to put more money into the program helping low-income homeowners install insulation, caulk around the window and door frames, and otherwise make their houses more fuel efficient.
The tax would go from two cents to four cents a gallon of fuel, an increase that can be looked at from two viewpoints. The one preferred by Republicans is that this proposal doubles the tax.
The arithmetic cannot be disputed. Four is two doubled. The other viewpoint is that a very small amount, doubled, produces another very small amount. In this case, Democrats estimated and Republicans did not dispute that the higher tax would cost the typical household $15 a year.
But the Republicans were not done. The tax increase, they said, would be “regressive.”
Vermont Democrats favor progressive taxation. They rarely come right out and say they favor soaking the rich. But often enough they come pretty close. For a Vermont Democrat, what cut could be unkinder than to be accused of favoring a regressive tax?
Especially when it’s true, or at least true enough. Rich people usually have bigger houses, which take more fuel to heat. But most of those houses are better insulated. It’s the low-income family with the drafty old house who pays the largest percentage of its income in the fuel tax. It’s a regressive tax at two cents a gallon, much less at four.
For at least two reasons, some Democratic House members began to have second thoughts about supporting the bill. One reason was that they did not want to be associated with anything that could be considered a regressive tax.
The other reason was that Republicans, thinking maybe they had a political winner, were using personal appearances, the airwaves, and social media to assail the proposal. Democrats began to wonder whether this bill was worth risking re-election.
And a risk it might be. As Rep. David Yacovone of Morrisville told his fellow Democrats, the $4.6 million to be raised by the tax increase would weatherize some 450 more homes in the first year. Increasing taxes on many thousands for the immediate benefit of a few hundred presents political peril.
So when the bill got to the House floor, party leaders weren’t sure they had enough votes. A quick recess was announced; a quick caucus was assembled.
Here, not for the first time and probably not for the last, Democrats may have gotten a boost from Republican overreach. Not content to calling the tax regressive, Republicans insisted on relabelling it a “carbon tax.”
It is not. A carbon tax is levied on a fuel’s carbon content. This one is levied by the gallon. It’s just an increase to the fuel tax that was adopted in the 1970s, before anyone had ever heard of a carbon tax.
Mere fact here, however, fades before the obsession Vermont Republicans have with a carbon tax, which will not pass (or even be seriously considered by) the Legislature this year, but which Republicans constantly raise as a specter as desirable as bubonic plague.
Again, political calculation is involved. Republicans are convinced that most voters oppose a carbon tax. But the Republicans who most eagerly raise the carbon tax danger are part of that minority who dismiss the danger of global warming. Harping on the carbon tax seems part of their effort to ridicule the folks who worry about climate change.
That would be the House Democrats. They kept insisting that the purpose of this tax hike was “to weatherize low-income homes,” in the words of the bill’s sponsor, Rep. James Masland of Thetford Center. That distinguished it from a carbon tax, the purpose of which is to reduce the demand for fossil fuels.
Except as one speaker after another noted, they really did have to do something to reduce the demand for fossil fuels. Global warming was real, said Rep. Michael Yantachka, of Charlotte, and “we can’t bury our heads in the sand and say we can’t do anything about it.”
As to any blowback members may be getting from their constituents, Yantachka told his fellow Democrats, that “while there are issues where we need to listen to our constituents … there are other issues, and this is one of them, where I think we should be the leaders. … If our constituents say, don’t do this, we should be able to tell them we have to do it.”
Talk about political risk. Wait until the Republicans get done playing with that one. They’ll paint the entire Democratic caucus as a bunch of out-of-touch elitists. Yantachka’s approach is exactly what the Founding Fathers had in mind when they created their version of democracy, but it’s still dangerous to say out loud.
The caucus worked. Confirmed in their conviction that this was not a carbon tax, and determined to do something – anything – about climate change, the Democrats passed the bill 81-60, a healthy majority though not nearly enough to override a possible veto by Republican Gov. Phil Scott.
A veto some Democrats might secretly welcome, and not only to avoid political consequences. There’s also a separate piece of legislation, S.37, already passed by the Senate, which would “hold any person who releases a toxic substance … liable for any harm resulting.”
And what do you think might be full of toxic substances?
Insulation. Sometimes worthy goals conflict. Governing is hard.
