Spin control: Tax cuts, hikes – a matter of semantics

Forget the sniping over emergency money for Iraq. It couldn’t hold a candle to the House budget bill for generating serious – and seriously bad – spin.

The last yeas and nays on the House budget proposal were still echoing Thursday when Democrats and Republicans began swinging blades like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Leonardo.

The GOP weighed in on what an abomination this bill is, because, in the words of state Chairman Luke Esser, Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, of Washington, Rep. Bill Sali, of Idaho, and anyone getting talking points from Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform, it represents:

“The largest tax increase in history!” Gasp.

Don’t go scurrying to the record books to figure out how this bill compares to the tax increases of 1863 or 1942 or 1992. The House budget written by Democrats does not, in itself, raise taxes.

What it actually does is not call for the current “temporary” tax cuts to be continued beyond 2010.

As most people realize, between now and then there are four years – and perhaps more important, two elections – to settle on which tax cuts stay and which ones, if any, go.

McMorris Rodgers had some more directed complaints, saying the House Democrats’ budget does not include an extension of the state sales tax deduction. That may have a bit more weight, considering the sales tax deduction is only good through 2007, and thus must be renewed sometime before December 2008.

But remember the sound and fury over the “disappearing” state sales tax deduction last year: political football in the summer, stalled in a paralyzed Congress in the fall, ammunition for candidates of all stripes before the election, passed with everything else that had to be done post-election and signed by the president around Christmas. Yawn. The only people really affected were the IRS folks who had to send out new instructions on deductions.

So Thursday’s House budget vote is hardly the definitive word on the sales tax deduction, especially considering that bills to make the deduction permanent are pending in both houses.

Democrats engaged in their own spin, practically accusing McMorris Rodgers of kicking poor college students to the curb. She “voted for a Republican budget that cut student loans by $5 billion rather than support the fiscally responsible, balanced House budget,” fumed Rep. Chris Van Hollen, of Maryland, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

Considering that the committee’s job is to make sure Democrats get elected, and it did such a good job nationally that Democrats run the House, it’s a pretty good bet that Van Hollen knows a Republican budget this year doesn’t really do anything.

Except supply fodder for future campaigns.

Smile for the cameras

A coalition of anti-war groups hectoring members of Congress may have revealed more than they intended in a press release about an event last week. The groups planned a “nonviolent occupation of a Senate office building,” and sent along a time and place.

“This event presents a photo opportunity for the media,” the notice advised in bold letters.

Used to be demonstrations were about ideas, not photo ops.

Tilting at something

Just when it seems no one can beat the Washington state Legislature for dithering, the Internet reveals that other states have legislators with too much time on their hands.

In Minnesota, Rep. Patti Fritz, of Faribault, is proposing that state’s Legislature designate the Tilt-A-Whirl as the official state amusement ride.

There is a parochial interest – two actually, according to Minneapolis station KARE: Tilt-A-Whirls (or should that be Tilts-A-Whirl?) have been made in Faribault ever since a local inventor came up with the idea in 1926. That, and a group of local kindergartners asked her.

Let’s hope she doesn’t go along if they ask her to join the class on the Tilt-A-Whirl after the afternoon snack.

But if this catches on – like previous movements to name a state flower, bird, song, gem, marine mammal, insect, folk song, tree, fruit, grass, fish and fossil – someone in Olympia will be lobbied to push through an amusement ride. Should someone be talking up the Carrousel before some West Sider starts pushing something at Seattle Center?

Spare change, lady?

The governor’s office is counting down the days to the release of the Washington state quarter. To mark that auspicious event on April 11, Gov. Chris Gregoire, her husband and the director of the U.S. Mint plan to hand out a shiny new state quarter to anyone 18 and under wandering through Seattle Center’s Fisher Pavilion that afternoon.

Seriously. Spin Control cannot make something like this up.

No word yet whether the State Patrol security detail will keep street kids who panhandle in the area from hitting up the gov for a quarter.