Conservative blogger Jason Mercier at the Washington Policy Center has an interesting follow-up post to our news report about the state house Democrats methodical set up to legally challenge to I-1053 (Tim Eyman’s two-thirds-to-raise-taxes rule) with their highly orchestrated bank tax loophole vote on the last day of session.
Mercier’s take: The senate Democrats may have screwed up the house ploy by not holding a similar vote:
Turns out Democrats in the Senate attempt to follow this strategy but couldn’t get the moderates in their caucus to go along.
Consider the bill history for SB 5945. Twice the bill was called up for executive action (May 18 and May 20) but neither time were supporters able to gain the votes necessary for passage by the Senate Ways and Means Committee. Though the details of SB 5945 were initially different than the tax bill Democrats tried to pass in the House (HB 2078), a substitute bill was proposed that closely mirrored the final version of HB 2078.
This means had the Senate Ways and Means committee adopted the substitute and Democrats tried to vote on the floor as the House did, the scenario described by Spitzer may have come to be.
Of course, for this tax lawsuit conspiracy to work, everyone needed to play their part to perfection. The Senate, however, wasn’t able to live up to the well orchestrated House script to drag the taxpayers into court over the 18 year old 2/3 vote requirement.
