The message is as clear as the one little boys send to little girls they love – they pull on their pigtails and make them cry.
Yvette Clarke, who sits on the House Small Business Committee, voted Thursday against a $15 billion jobs measure, a bill that gives tax breaks to businesses that hire from the deep pool of unemployed workers.
Though the bill passed with a handful of Democrats voting against it – they said the measure stopped short of spurring job creation and focused too much on business – Clarke’s decision to vote against it was rather unexpected.
The obvious reason would be that anyone who sits on a small business committee would see a measure that supports businesses with tax breaks and credits as favorable.
Indeed, one California Democrat who voted against the measure insisted that “we should stop calling it a jobs bill, and instead acknowledge this is about business tax cuts,” reported The New York Times.
But a more ponytail-tugging message is that, as recently as Wednesday, Clarke testified before the House Budget Committee to get money into the hands of small businesses.
She told the committee that the economic recession “has hit these businesses especially hard, forcing many to shed jobs or scale back operations. The credit crisis has made it more difficult for all small businesses to secure financing; limiting growth opportunities and jeopardizing short term business stability.”
Her message was clear then (small busineses need money now), but her vote Thursday on the jobs bill muddied it up (businesses need money, but not this way).
In her Brooklyn district, Clarke has one of the highest unemployment rates in New York City and New York state, of at least 11 percent in January (New York state averaged was 9.4 percent), according to the New York State Department of Labor. And she consistently peddles out messages about supporting the vast small businesses in her district.
Still, along with a House Democrat in Brooklyn that neighbors her district, she voted the jobs bill down – even as all other New York City representatives voted for the measure (except for Joseph Crowley, a Bronx Democrat who has similar unemployment levels as Clarke but did not vote on the bill).
Clarke has not (yet) explained her reasoning for pulling the pigtails on a jobs bill that would seem to benefit her district.
UPDATED: MARCH 6, 2010
Unlike many of her colleagues in the House, Clarke seems unworried about voting against a jobs bill in an election year at a time when Democrats are trying to show flustered Americans that Congress can get things done. If in her gut she feels the jobs bill is not actually a jobs-creating bill, she can afford to do the “right thing” and vote against it.
And that’s exactly what she did – though through the gut of the Congressional Black Caucus as the caucus whip.
All but one of the caucus’ officers voted against the bill (Rep. G. K. Butterfield of North Carolina, the caucus secretary, voted for the bill’s adoption) – the caucus’s official position.
“While tax cuts for some businesses may be needed, our priority must be to pass legislation that directly creates jobs. The Congressional Black Caucus is committed to finding a path forward that meets the dire needs of unemployed Americans, especially the chronically unemployed,” said the caucus’ chairwoman, Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA).
Therefore, as the whip, Clarke had to make sure CBC members voted according to its position – including her own vote. While she stayed true to CBC, a majority of its members clearly did not.
At least on this jobs bill, for Clarke, CBC trumps DNC. But what remains unclear is which one trumps her district and when does her district trump either CBC or DNC, or both.