Incompetent Senate GOP debates wrong tax bill

Ha ha! I didn't think things could get more bizarre, but this incident ranks up there:

The Senate was supposed to be debating Bush's tax proposal this week, as Bush himself toured the nation trying to "pressure" wavering senators to support his sop for the rich.

Except that Senate Republicans, led by the obviously inept Frist, debated the wrong bill.

Senators began what was planned to have been a week of intense deliberations over President Bush's biggest domestic initiative, only to discover they were debating the wrong bill.

Democrats refused to give GOP leaders an easy way out of their mistake Monday, and the Senate's tax-writing committee will have to meet again and send new tax-cut legislation to the floor.

Under the Senate's original schedule, senators would have spent the early part of the week debating the legislation as President Bush toured New Mexico, Nebraska and Indiana to bring pressure on senators at home and drum up support for a bigger tax cut than the Senate bill would allow. Because of the gaffe, the president will be back at the White House when the Senate wades into the debate.

The mix-up mattered because the bill that landed in the Senate did not carry special protections that block filibusters — infinite debates — which require 60 votes to end [...]

Other Democrats said the confusion, though funny, unmasked the Republicans for taking advantage of Senate procedures to push through a large tax cut on a party-line vote the same week they plan to increase the nation's debt limit by $1 trillion.

Posted May 13, 2003 08:41 AM | Comments (25)