Landrieu vote shows she remains liberal Democrat puppet

The following statement appears in the website biography of Sen. Mary Landrieu: “A moderate Democrat, she is known as an independent voice willing to cross party lines to support legislation that is right for Louisiana.” Her actions on recent votes on the minimum wage increase and a limited repeal of the estate death tax reveals this statement to be a lie.

Landrieu has been a consistent supporter of a hike in the economically-insipid minimum wage, but previously has shown more sense than most Democrats when it comes to repeal of the estate tax. That is the particularly immoral absconding of assets governments participate in when somebody dies and leaves too many of them to heirs, which has the practical effect of suppressing economic activity just like the minimum wage.

In fact, last month Landrieu proposed legislation that attempted to create compromise between Republicans who wanted to make the repeal of the estate tax permanent (it is scheduled to go back to its full 55 percent level in 2011 otherwise) and Democrats fanatically opposed to the idea. In fact, it was so highly considered by Republicans that they made it a major portion of their bill to repeal permanently the tax.

However, the Republicans combined in that bill this idea with the suboptimal increase in the minimum wage – as bad as a drag on the economy that would be Republican leaders felt repeal of the death tax would more than compensate for those negatives, if it were the only way to get the repeal made permanent. One would think that this gave Landrieu the perfect opportunity to get both her wants into law – a bill with the increase in the minimum wage that she has supported, and containing much of her language in regards to the estate tax.

But, guess what? The Democrat leadership in the Senate is so obsessed with warring on America’s most productive citizens, the ones who contribute most to society, the people who die leaving large estates almost always because of their skill in producing economic development and greater wealth for all, that this party of special interests decided it would rather punish these people than to transfer wealth to a small group of people to whom they have paid enormous lip service on the minimum wage issue. In short, the Democrats do not really mean what they say concerning their rhetoric about increasing the minimum wage – it’s just a way to buy votes that they’ll easily cast aside when it infringes on their insane desire to engage in class warfare.

Obviously, this provided a test for Landrieu’s presumed independence. If she really meant that she was not a puppet of the liberal Democrat leadership, if she really wanted to stand up for Louisiana, on the cloture motion regarding the bill (as Democrat leaders were going to launch a filibuster on it in order to prevent it from coming to a vote because a majority if the Senate favored it; to break an attempted filibuster 60 votes rather than a majority are needed) she would have voted in favor of this motion to limit debate, to allow a vote on a bill she had expressed so much support of in different forms.

Of course, she voted against it because we must never forget that Landrieu will say one thing to get elected, to make the people of Louisiana think she is with them, but when she gets to Washington she’ll vote more often against the state’s – and country’s – interest than with it. All concerned citizens need to pay heed to her behavior in relation to this incident. She is no “independent voice,” she does not “cross party lines to support legislation that is right for Louisiana,” she just follows her liberal instincts to empower her Democrat cronies, to the detriment of the citizenry.