Florida First District Congressman Jeff Miller was one of 167 House members who thought it better to fly off the “fiscal cliff” than support a last-minute bailout negotiated by the Senate.
“I thought it was a terrible package the Senate sent to the House,” Miller said Wednesday after Tuesday night’s House vote. “They jammed us with this and turned around and went home.”
Miller joined most of Florida’s congressional Republicans in voting against the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012, a package of spending cuts and tax hikes expected to raise federal revenues by $600 billion.
They wound up on the losing end of a 257-167 vote that prevented the nation from tumbling over the oft-discussed cliff.
While Miller applauded the extension of George W. Bush-era tax cuts for most of the population, he criticized the bill’s allowing taxes to increase for Americans who earn $400,000 or more.
“No one wanted taxes to go up on anybody, but the president clearly made those successful in business out to be the bad guy. I was appalled to see his press conference where people actually cheered the tax hikes,” Miller said. “He’s made job creators and successful business people the enemy.”
Miller also noted that the bill will add $4 trillion to the national debt, is chock full of pork and does nothing to ease his constituents’ worries about deep cuts to military spending through sequestration.
“Sequestration was postponed for 60 days, but it’s still coming,” he said. “Unfortunately, this administration has had a year to prepare for it … all year long the administration did not think sequestration would kick in. Now they’ve got two months to figure something out.”
Sequestration, a deal hammered out at the time a congressional “super committee” was formed to find ways to cut national spending, would require the military to scale back spending by $500 billion over 10 years.
Had the bill not been passed, sequestration would have been triggered Wednesday.
The billions of dollars in sequestration cuts would come on top of already planned reductions in military spending. Among the many missions that could be on the chopping block is the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program.
The F-35’s testing and evaluation is done at Eglin Air Force Base.
Miller said he has begun to wonder if sequestration might be one way to force the federal government’s hand to cut spending.
“That may be the only way cuts can be made,” he said. “That may be the only way we can make them.”
Miller acknowledged that with passage of the fiscal cliff bill, 77 percent of Americans will see more money taken out of their checks each month because of the expiration of a cut in the payroll tax.
And while the bill does make Bush-era tax cuts permanent and positively impacts “a large swath of people,” Miller said he fears a “huge negative impact” on small business owners.
Republican lawmakers were able to remove language inserted by Barack Obama into the bill that would have raised congressional salaries, Miller said.
He called the debate on the bill “very philosophical.” Some Republicans voted for it to salvage the tax cuts, Miller said. “I felt like we lost some of our best leverage with the White House. I think we squandered a great opportunity.”
While Miller, the chairman of the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee, voted against the Taxpayer Relief Act, the man who appointed him, House Speaker John Boehner, voted for the measure.
There was no pressure applied to have House members vote one way or another, Miller said.
“The leadership let the legislators vote their conscience,” he said.