GOP's ( Conservative) 'leverage' is tantamount to extortion - by George Skelton
Presently in the US Congress Senate Republicans are abusing the two-thirds vote requirement for passage of many bills to try to get Democrats to cave in on unrelated demands.The two-thirds rule is not used merely to protect taxpayers from politicians trying to reach deeper into their pockets. It's used by special interests -- mainly big business -- to game the system; a tool handy for legislative leverage, or extortion. If you don't give us what we want, we'll withhold the votes needed for the two-thirds. It's about buying and selling. Last Friday, at the all-night windup of this year's regular legislative session, Democrats weren't in a buying mood. This is what happened, according to Democrats, and Republicans aren't exactly denying it: The Senate GOP blocked more than 20 bills requiring a two-thirds vote because Democrats wouldn't cave on three unrelated demands.
One demand was the elimination of a program, called ReadyReturn, that allows low-income earners to have the state do their tax returns free. Intuit wants these people to buy its software product, TurboTax. Since 2005, the company has donated to the political coffers of three-fourths of the Senate, The Times reported Tuesday. Another GOP insistence was that a big corporate tax break enacted as part of the February budget deal be tweaked to help more businesses, especially Chevron.
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