
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, January 12, 1995                   TAG: 9501130019
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A14   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

TAX BILLS

THE NEW GOP majority's reforms of congressional procedures have been, for the most part, constructive and overdue. One notable exception is a rule requiring a three-fifths vote to pass any bill that includes an increase in income tax rates. While its symbolic political value is obvious enough (who likes tax increases?), this rule change could, as a practical matter, prove troublesome.

Fortunately, the courts may rule it unconstitutional. If for some reason they don't, Congress ought to reconsider and reverse the change.

As a practical matter, tax bills typically include a number of provisions, some of them reducing rates and/or increasing rates, others closing or opening loopholes and adding or subtracting portions of assets or incomes that are taxable. Republicans themselves could be frustrated in presenting a legislative package of tax cuts, if it also includes adjustments that might be interpreted as having the effect of a tax increase. The new rule in any case would hand over tax policy to a minority of members.

This would seem, at least, to violate the intent of the Constitution's framers. The U.S. charter explicitly allows for five cases, with two added by amendments, in which a simple majority does not govern congressional business. The exceptions include overriding a presidential veto, Senate consent to a treaty, impeachment verdicts and constitutional amendments.

These provisions excepted, the Constitution clearly calls for majority rule. Article I, Sec. 5, states that "a Majority of each [house] shall constitute a quorum to do Business." James Madison explained in the Federalist Papers that a proposal requiring a supermajority for a quorum was rejected because: "In all cases where justice or the general good might require new laws to be passed, or active measures to be pursued, the fundamental principle of free government would be reversed. It would be no longer the majority that would rule: the power would be transferred to the minority."

Madison's "fundamental principle" remains compelling today.

by CNB