Joe Donnelly: Flip-Flop When Convenient

By: Brian Sikma

“Congressman Donnelly Votes to Allow Hoosier Taxpayers to Keep More of their Money.” So blares the headline of a press release issued by Rep. Joe Donnelly’s (D-IN) Congressional office. The press release touts Joe Donnelly’s vote to patch the Alternative Minimum Tax for the next year so middle income families will not be hit with a tax designed decades ago to insure that the very rich contribute something in income taxes.

This vote is a good vote, but unfortunately Joe Donnelly voted against fixing the AMT before he voted to fix the AMT. On December 19th, Donnelly joined 351 other House members in voting to protect American taxpayers from a tax increase. Just two days earlier, on December 17th, Joe Donnelly voted with House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and the wishes of Speaker Pelosi to adjourn the session without passing AMT relief.

According to the press release, Donnelly declared that “With the increasing costs of energy, healthcare, and education, the last thing Hoosiers need is to be paying higher income taxes.” That is true, but why did Joe Donnelly vote to adjourn the session when his constituents needed him to fight for tax relief?

Joe Donnelly is part of a Democrat Majority that has failed to pass necessary spending bills, welcomed illegal immigrants, stolen a floor vote, tried to raise taxes on energy companies and spent more time fighting with the President over Iraq than paying attention to cleaning up the culture of corruption that exists in the earmark process.

To top all of this off, the PAYGO spending rules heralded by Donnelly and the rest of the Democrat Majority had to be violated in order to pass AMT reform. The Democrat Majority can’t even govern itself according to the rules it laid out at the beginning of the year. If you can’t govern according to your own rules how can you expect to effectively govern the rest of the country?