Brady eyes his last tax fight
Retiring Republican from The Woodlands is turning to Texas Dems to kill spending bill
WASHINGTON — As Republicans gear up to fight a $3.5 trillion spending package Democrats aim to pass this fall, they’re relying on a Texas congressman who has become the party’s “goto guy” to fight taxes.
That’s what Grover Norquist, perhaps the nation’s leading antitax advocate, calls U.S. Rep. Kevin Brady, a Republican from The Woodlands who is making what may be his last stand in Congress, a cap on the retiring Republican’s 24-year career spent pushing for low taxes and light regulations.
“Whenever there’s a tax fight defense or offense, Brady was one of the first guys you’d work with,” Norquist said.
Brady chaired the Ways and Means Committee as it drafted former President Donald Trump’s income tax rewrite in 2017. Now he is a leading figure in the GOP’s effort to tank President Joe Biden’s budget that would undo key elements of those tax reforms by raising taxes on the wealthy and corporations.
Brady is particularly leaning on Texas Democrats — and calling publicly for their support — as Republicans seek to peel off just enough moderates from the other party to sink the bill.
The tax hikes Democrats are proposing, which by some estimates could total more than $140 billion in new taxes on oil and gas companies, will hit Texas, and
especially Houston, harder than just about any other part of the country, he says.
“You only need four votes in the House to block these crippling tax hikes. Four of those votes are here in Texas, among Democrats who run for Congress as moderate, Main Street Democrats,” Brady said in an interview with the Houston Chronicle. “If the White House and Speaker (Nancy) Pelosi were coming for the auto industry, every lawmaker in Detroit would fight those tax hikes tooth and nail.”
Some Democrats are already starting to voice doubts about the spending package, even as party leaders press on.
U.S. Reps. Henry Cuellar of Laredo, Vicente Gonzalez of McAllen and Lizzie Fletcher of Houston all signed a letter to House leadership raising concerns over some of the same new tax provisions.
U.S. Rep. Stephanie Murphy, a Florida Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee, said last week she would vote against the bills moving through the committee, saying the process has been “too rushed, driven by politics rather than policy.”
U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin, a West Virginia Democrat, has urged the party to “hit pause.”
Texas Democrats have not yet gone that far, pointing out that they have yet to see the text of the spending bills and still don’t know what will end up in the final package.
Leery of ‘targeting’ oil
Fletcher said she and her staff have been in “a very constant dialogue” with Democrats on the Ways and Means Committee who are crafting the tax provisions.
“Rep. Brady hasn’t talked to me about it. If he had, he would know I have been working on these issues since this process began,” Fletcher said. “I cannot think of a day I haven’t been on the phone with my constituents or my colleagues talking about some of the various proposed pay-fors that are floating around out there.”
In a statement, Gonzalez said there is “still a lot unknown about the package” and said this is a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to invest in our future and enhance the quality of life for millions of Americans.” But he also voiced some reservations about the taxes on oil and gas.
“While I am eager to work with leadership and the current administration to address the challenges of our changing climate, we must get this right,” Gonzalez said. “Targeting America’s energy industry will not only harm our energy independence and supply, but it will force us to turn to other countries’ dirtier, less efficient oil and gas. Let’s not forget in Texas alone, oil and gas supports over 2.5 million jobs, provides more than $251 billion in wages and contributed more than $411 billion to the state’s economy in 2019. We must not leave these workers behind.”
In 2020, Republicans had success in Texas warning of the damage Biden’s proposals would have on the oil and gas industry, holding off Democrats’ advances in an increasingly competitive state and even making surprise headway into long-blue districts in South Texas.
“The state is more purple than before, and Republicans like Congressman Brady are returning to bread-and-butter political issues to make sure Republicans can hold the line in 2022,” said Brandon Rottinghaus, a political scientist at the University of Houston. “Persuadable voters are moved by pocketbook issues, so talking about low taxes and protecting oil and gas jobs can shift the needle for Republicans in suburban districts where they have struggled to maintain control.”
Key for Biden’s goals
Environmental advocates, however, say the tax hikes are an important part of the package’s effort to shift America to clean energy, a move that a growing number of Texans support, in part because of how cities such as Houston have become prime examples of the effects of climate change.
The spending package aims to meet Biden’s goals of generating 80 percent of electricity from clean energy and lowering greenhouse gas emissions by 50 percent by 2030.
“This would be by far the largest step any country and certainly the U.S. has taken to tackle climate change,” said Luke Metzger, executive director of Environment Texas, an environmental advocacy group based in Austin. “Global warming is causing both loss of life but also extreme harm to our economy — costing us billions of dollars in needing to repair destroyed homes and businesses, to harden defenses against extreme storms. Doing nothing is not an option. That’s going to cost billions or trillions of dollars to our economy.”
Polling suggests Texas voters are increasingly supportive of green energy. A January survey by the Hobby School of Public Affairs at the University of Houston found Texans overwhelmingly favor expanding solar power plants (69 percent) and wind turbine farms (63 percent). A substantial number of respondents also wanted to reduce coal mining (50 percent) and fracking (42 percent). Just 19 percent and 27 percent favored expanding coal mining and fracking, respectively.
But Brady’s warnings about oil and gas are just a piece of the broader messaging about the costs of the spending package that Republicans he leads on the Ways and Means Committee have been pushing.
Biden has vowed not to raise taxes on families earning less than $400,000, and Democrats have so far remained focused on raising taxes on the wealthy and corporations. But Brady says changes to other tax provisions could cost small businesses, farmers and others.
“He’s been highlighting to people who gets hurt, how many people get hurt — and that’s why you’re seeing Democrats begin to walk away,” Norquist said.
“Brady is obviously the leading edge of making that case,” said Frank Clemente, executive director of Americans for Tax Fairness, a progressive group pushing the spending bill. “He’s kind of relentless, he kind of puts them — he forces moderate Democrats who are afraid of the tax issue into a corner. It’s a big PR machine that he’s kind of the tip of the spear on.”