STILL LOOKING AHEAD: As the Inside Congress team also noted, actually finishing off any of those legislative priorities would take up a good chunk of floor time, but failing initial procedural votes would not. And that sets up the choices facing Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, who was an early supporter of the Wyden-Smith tax plan, about how to proceed with the bill. There are business lobbyists out there who say that supporters of the tax bill are within shouting distance of securing the roughly 10 Senate Republicans needed for the bill to cross the magic 60-vote threshold, even as most observers believe the tax deal is in serious trouble in the Senate. So the questions facing Schumer are two-fold: If he believes that Democrats can get the votes, does he want to use what would be precious floor time on the tax bill instead of some of those other priorities? And if Democrats don’t believe they can get the votes? Well, it wouldn’t take much floor time to have a failed procedural vote. Now, one school of thought would argue not to bring the tax bill up for a vote just to see it immediately go down. But another way of thinking is that Democrats might want to force Senate Republicans to fully own the defeat of the tax bill, which would restore key tax breaks that the GOP’s historical allies in the business community have spent years fighting for. A DIFFERENT KIND OF TAX VOTE: Voters in Kansas City head to the polls on Tuesday to decide whether to approve a new sales tax that would raise a couple billion dollars of new revenues to help the stadium situations for two local professional sports franchises, as The Kansas City Star has reported in full. Major League Baseball’s Kansas City Royals are pushing to build a new downtown stadium, while the National Football League’s Kansas City Chiefs are seeking to do major renovations on the team’s existing set-up. The proposal that voters will consider on Tuesday would put a 3/8-cent sales tax on the books for four full decades, through 2064, to raise that $2 billion in the long run. There’s sort of a catch there, though — Jackson County, the home of Kansas City, already has a 3/8-cent sales tax that helps fund the stadiums for the Royals and the Chiefs. That tax is scheduled to expire in 2031, and would continue even if voters oppose the current ballot measure on Tuesday. So in essence, supporters of the new proposal have made the case that people won’t actually face a higher tax burden, even if the ballot measure would lock in the current special sales tax for an additional 33 years. So broadly speaking, why does this particular vote matter outside of Kansas City? Well, for starters, it’s just the latest example of team owners seeking public money to help with stadiums, either from their current location or from jurisdictions hungry to attract professional teams. Economists and experts basically from across the political spectrum believe that professional sports stadiums aren’t a good use of taxpayer resources. And yet, it’s still quite common for state and local governments to help out with arenas and stadiums. The owners of the Chiefs and Royals have pushed hard for the current ballot measure, essentially arguing that it’s the only way to ensure that the teams stay in Kansas City for the long-term. But the most recent example of teams seeking public money was an exception to that general rule — Virginia’s efforts to lure the National Basketball Association’s Washington Wizards and the National Hockey League’s Washington Capitals across the river to Alexandria were blocked by Democratic lawmakers in Richmond. So let’s see what happens on Tuesday. Another interesting factor to look out for moving forward on these issues: The firm of Jeff Roe, a prominent GOP operative who most recently worked for the super PAC supporting the presidential campaign of Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, is also running the campaign backing the sales tax increase.
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