The following is a guest post from “John Griffin”:http://www.nd.edu/~jgriffi1/ and Claudia Anewalt.
bq. How do members of Congress decide how to vote on estate tax legislation? This is not a hypothetical question, as the looming expiration of the 2001 Bush tax cuts would increase the estate tax rate to pre-2001 levels (55%) and also reduce the amount exempt from the tax to $1 million. Many of the factors likely to affect legislators’ voting on whether to extend the Bush tax cuts, including the estate tax, are predictable: party affiliations, constituents’ preferences, and reelection prospects. If history is a guide, though, another factor may also influence members of Congress to support extending the cuts:
bq. Their bank accounts.
bq. In the 109th Congress (2005-06), three proposals to repeal the estate tax or reduce the estate tax rate came to a vote in the House. We analyzed the roll call and cosponsorship behavior of House members on these bills to determine if legislators’ assets predicted their support for these bills. The Ethics in Government Act of 1978 requires all public officials to disclose their assets, although private residences are excluded from this calculation.
bq. According to our analysis, wealthier legislators were more likely to vote for and cosponsor the anti-estate tax bills. We divided legislators into three categories of assets. The average number of bills that each group of legislators supported increases sharply as they become wealthier: from 1.5 among those with less than $250,000 in assets to 2.0 among those with at least $1.75 million in assets. There is a similar pattern for cosponsorships. (Here we exclude one bill that had only 4 co-sponsors).
bq. Wealthier members were still more likely to support this legislation even after we accounted for their party affiliations, their National Taxpayer Union “scorecards” (reflecting opposition to taxes on other bills), and the characteristics of their districts (median income, urbanicity, and polled opposition to the estate tax).
bq. Aristotle, Locke, Madison, and Jefferson all argued that lawmakers should be subject to the laws they make. This is thought to constrain legislators, preventing them from imposing burdens on citizens that legislators do not have to suffer themselves. As Madison put it in Federalist 57, “the House of Representatives . . . can make no law which will not have its full operation on themselves and their friends, as well as on the great mass of the society. This has always been deemed one of the strongest bonds by which human policy can connect the rulers and the people together.”
bq. Our analysis of estate tax lawmaking in the 109th Congress serves as a caution that making legislators subject to the laws also permits them to pursue policies that may further their own, narrow interest.