On Wednesday, December 12th, Peter Roskam again voted to hold hostage the Democratic plan to relieve middle class taxpayers of liability for the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT), a tax which was instituted years ago to prevent the wealthiest individuals from escaping paying any taxes by setting a minimum tax that must be paid by individuals with incomes above a threshold. Because the tax was not designed to account for inflation, an addition 23 million individuals of relatively modest incomes will be affected in the coming tax season with an average of $2000 in additional tax liability, unless the Democrats in Congress are able to apply a fix.

Peter Roskam and his Republican colleagues, acting in tandem with George Bush, are presently attempting to obstruct the Democratic efforts to provide this needed relief to middle class taxpayers. The Republicans are obstructing this relief, not so much because they want to increase taxes on the middle class, but because, to them, the needs of the middle class are largely irrelevant. Republicans are focused on giving tax-breaks to the wealthiest individuals and to big business, and if to do so, they have to hold the middle class tax cut hostage, that is just fine with them.

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On December 13th, 2007, Peter Roskam cast another vote in support of the continued use of torture by CIA interrogators.

The vote was on the conference report for HR 2082, the intelligence funding bill, and Roskam voted against it. The bill, if signed into law, would explicitly prohibit the use of such inhumane interrogation techniques as waterboardiing, electrocution, sensory deprivation, induced hypothermia, and deprivation of food, water and medical care. The bill also would require that all detainees be accorded the protections of the Geneva Conventions, ending the practice by the Bush administration of using the “enemy combant” designation invented by the Bush administration as a means of escaping its obligation to meet minimum standards in the treatment of prisoners of its so-called “War on Terrorism”.

It is unclear whether Roskam’s vote reflects a pro-torture conviction on his part or is just another “rubber stamp” of approval on administration policy. It is also possible that Roskam is simply too distracted by his principal agenda of promoting corporate interests to fully attend to the question of torture.

As of this writing, Roskam’s House web site is silent on the issue of torture.

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