A hastily called Joint Committee on Appropriations and budget just recessed and members are filing into the House chamber to push the deal through. Great promises were made in the committee room. Among them was Jon Echols' clear claim that if we accept the big $1.50 tax hike on each pack of cigarettes;
"It will end smoking in Oklahoma!" The deal includes huge new spending on common education.
It hikes fuel taxes, sales taxes, oil production taxes, and several other regressive measures. The economy will no doubt be greatly burdened with carrying the load of an ever-growing state government. Echols started out the floor procedures by moving to suspend the chambers rules which do no allow for a vote on legislation not yet, written, distributed, or read by the members of of the House. It took some suspicious maneuvers to get the motion to suspend the rules to attain the 2/3 vote. It seems to have come down to Chuck Strohm & Sean Roberts (who just happen to be the co-chairs of the Platform Caucus). |
Of all the promises made in exchange for supporting these massive new taxes, Jon Echols may have made the biggest one.
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Leadership left the voting open for a long period, and shut off the microphones, because they were 1 vote shy of their 66 needed to suspend the House Rules and push through a budget that no one has seen or studied.
Sean Roberts, Chuck Strohm, and Rick West finally switched to the affirmative, and voted to set aside the House Rules for this one Monster tax bill.
from Sooner Politics.org - Editorial http://www.soonerpolitics.org/editorial/house-votes-on-budget-deal-today
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