BATON ROUGE (AP) — Louisiana's congressional delegation split in voting over the deal to prevent the so-called "fiscal cliff"
of widespread tax increases and deep spending cuts, with most of the state's Republican members rejecting the compromise.
While Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu and Republican Sen. David Vitter supported the legislation, a majority of the state's
U.S. House delegation opposed it late Tuesday night in the final vote that sent the bill to President Barack Obama's desk.
The dean of Louisiana's House members, Rep. Rodney Alexander of Quitman, was the state's only Republican in the chamber to
support the legislation. He joined with Democratic Rep. Cedric Richmond in voting for the bill, amid concerns that without
a deal, the tax hikes and spending reductions could send the nation's economy back into recession.
"I just thought it was what we needed to do," Alexander said Wednesday.
He said he didn't want to see taxes rise on anyone, but he noted that the Bush-era tax cuts already had technically expired
when the House voted on the last-minute fiscal deal. So, Alexander said he was supporting a tax cut for most people around
the country.
"What we were voting on was the largest tax decrease in the history of the nation. What we did was we lowered taxes for 98
percent of the American public, and we made them permanent," he said.
Louisiana's five other GOP House members —
Reps. Charles Boustany, Bill Cassidy, John Fleming, Jeff Landry and
Steve Scalise
— voted against it, criticizing the measure of relying too heavily
on tax increases to help shrink the federal deficit instead
of using spending cuts. They joined many other Republican House
members in opposing the measure.
The deal keeps income taxes from rising on
the middle class and the poor, while allowing those taxes to increase on
the rich
and postponing decisions on more than $100 billion in defense and
domestic spending cuts. A two-year, 2-percentage-point cut
in the Social Security payroll tax was allowed to expire across
the board. No decision was made on raising the federal borrowing
limit to allow the country to continue paying its bills, though
the debt ceiling could be reached within a few months.
Fleming, of Minden, said the deal that passed enacts $10 of tax increases for every $1 of cuts and increases federal spending
on unemployment benefits and other areas of government, while delaying needed decisions on changes to entitlement programs
and the debt ceiling.
"I came to Washington four years ago on a
promise to fight for less taxes, smaller government and economic
freedom. The bill
that I voted NO on last night will increase taxes, allowing for
more wasteful government spending and for a larger and more
intrusive federal government," Fleming said in a statement
Wednesday.
Other members of Louisiana's congressional delegation echoed similar sentiments.
Boustany, of Lafayette, said the measure was a "fundamental failure to address one of the biggest problems facing our nation
today: government spending."
Landry, a tea party favorite who lost his runoff bid to Boustany as the state lost a congressional seat, opposed the "fiscal
cliff" deal as his last vote in the U.S. House. He said the legislation "only transported Americans to a higher cliff from
which to fall," rather than solving fiscal problems.