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Mike Thompson Watch
Mike Thompson voted for the Small Business Tax Relief Act, H.R. 976, which passed the House 360 to 45. This is supposed to compensate small businesses for the minimum wage hike passed earlier; that is why Republicans and Democrats alike voted for it. The $1.3 billion in tax cuts would mainly come in the form of extentions of scheduled-to-expire tax credits for small-business owners, while raising the amount of capital spending they can write off every year
Mike also voted for the Iraq War Policy Resolution, which passed 246-182 (with Democrats mostly for it, and Republicans mostly against it). This was a non-binding resolution against President Bush's plan to send more U.S. troops to Iraq. It is a great be-on-both-sides-at-once bill. It criticizes Bush's conduct of the war, but does not deal with the fundamental issues of the war. It does not stop the war or slow it down. It allows Democratic politicians who have anti-war constituencies to pretend to be against the war. But the war will go on exactly as planned by President Bush. It doesn't anger the muddled middle voters, who don't like to feel responsible for dead Iraqi children or dead U.S. soldiers, but who also don't want to feel responsible if the Islamic militias ever pull off something like the 9/11 attack again.